A Different Path
by scifiromance
Summary: What if it had been Chakotay who travelled back to Voyager in "Endgame"? C/7.
1. Chapter 1

**A/n: Hi! Here is the first chapter of my new fic, an AU of "Endgame". **

The hull of the Voyager C, the third Starfleet vessel of that name in three decades, had buckled in on itself like tinfoil crushed in a fist after several punishing direct hits from ruthlessly efficient Borg torpedoes. Even Deck 6, centred on the Astrometrics lab that had been the last bastion of resistance after the Bridge had been assimilated, was now free of the urgent cries of individual Starfleet personnel, only the deliberate, mechanical footfalls of drones now echoed through its corridors. One corridor was partially blocked by part of the ship's metal skeleton having collapsed through the ceiling panels, ripping loose wiring which now cast an intermittent electrical glow over the pallid grey bodies which lay strewn haphazardly around. A girl's mane of thick wavy long hair caught the light eerily; it gleamed a luxuriant golden brown at the tips but at the crown near the scalp was caked beyond recognition with a rusty brown sticky substance that also ran down in rivulets to stain the turquoise highlights of the girl's ensign uniform. She had enough of life's awareness left in her that the trickling sensation bothered her, and she dimly tried to lift a hand to wipe it away, but the wayward limb would not obey her command. Earlier in her headstrong, determined life this would have frustrated her no end but not now; in the back of her mind an instinct told her it didn't matter, no more than the sickly sweet taste filling her mouth mattered, not in the grand scheme of things.

Still, she was very aware of the footsteps thudding closer and closer, like an encroaching thunder storm on a summer evening; her hearing had not yet deserted her and neither had fear. As the metal webbed legs of a drone approached her body seemed to wither even further in an attempt to remain unnoticed. Fate pushed her into failure as the drone's weight landed on her one of her splayed out hands, crushing every fragile bone that hadn't already been snapped. Even in her hopeless fog, a scream of agony built up desperately in her leaden, oxygen starved lungs, but an urgent, commanding, hiss in her ear killed the urge instantly, "Don't scream! _Never _alert a drone to your presence!" The girl's eyes swivelled around wildly for the familiar, yet half forgotten voice that she trusted immediately, but the corridor was empty, she and the drone were alone. It's face, once a young man's, stared down at her, she could see her own pale blue eyes reflected in the silver of his implants. "Be irrelevant." The voice whispered to her, pleading now, and she obeyed, letting her heavy lids finally close and her mind let go.

* * *

><p>"Are you alright Kate?" Admiral Kathryn Janeway smiled as she felt comfort wash over her at the sound of his voice.<p>

"I'm fine Mark, just a lot of old memories." She told him softly, "I'm getting a little old for these anniversaries."

Mark smiled at her teasingly, "I'll remember to remind you of that when our first anniversary comes around in a few months."

"Very funny!" Kathryn threw back before planting a light kiss on his now slightly weathered lips as he ran an affectionate hand through her now silver hair.

Pulling back, Mark placed a supportive hand on her arm. "Ready now?"

Kathryn gave a quick decisive nod, a credit to her Starfleet training, and stepped into the lavishly decorated hall, reading the "10th Anniversary" banners with a flinch of pain before she was caught unawares by Reg Barclay's understanding, and relieved, smile. "I'm so glad you could make it Admiral!" he exclaimed happily.

"As if I could miss the anniversary of the best day of my life Reg!" She joked, old grief replaced with pleasure as she saw the familiar faces. "How are you getting on with your speech?"

Reg gulped nervously. "As…well as can be expected. The Doctor has been…helping me with my stutt…stutter." He laughed it off, "Don't make me nervous or I'll need more help!"

"Where is the Doctor anyway? I thought…" Janeway began before she was interrupted by a light tug on her leg and looked down to see little Sabrina Wildman grinning up at her.

"Admiral, will _you_ help me get into Starfleet Academy early?" she asked earnestly.

Janeway chuckled, "Well, I don't know…"

"Sabrina! Don't bother Admiral Janeway with that!" A heavily pregnant Naomi Wildman admonished her daughter as she rushed over, "I'm sorry, she…" She began, a light flush of embarrassment flooding her cheeks.

"She reminds me of a little girl I used to know and she turned out very well." A new voice said with soft reassurance that made Naomi's eyes fill up with tears.

"Chakotay…" She murmured, immediately hugging him hard as she scanned him in concern. "How are you?"

His lips gave a twist of badly disguised pain in response but his eyes were warm as he looked her over. "Congratulations."

"Oh…" Naomi mumbled, having for a second forgotten about her baby bump. "Thank you." A lump formed in her throat when she saw the sincerity in his eyes was clouded with grief, nothing had been fair to the good heartened man who'd been, like some others, a surrogate uncle in her youth.

He smiled at her briefly and turned to the Captain, who looked shaken by his very presence. "I didn't expect to see you here; you've left the uniform at home I see?"

He nodded distractedly. "I'm not that person anymore, not on any day of the year." He told her firmly. "You're enjoying married life?"

"Oh yes, thirty three years later than planned of course…" She said lightly as her gaze moved from her new gleaming ring to his, which in contrast was burnished with a quarter of a century of turbulent wear, and a sigh left her lips, which made him tense despite his hard learned decades of restraint around her, he was _not_ going to be lectured about "a new lease on life" today of all days.

"I'll see you later Admiral." He said in a controlled tone before disappearing into the crowd, remerging at the sound of Tom's voice as he spoke with the Doctor.

"Congratulations, I'm from a mixed marriage myself and I can tell you they're often the best kind." Tom was cheerily telling the Doctor and a young woman Chakotay didn't recognise, but assumed to be the Doctor's new bride. He watched as the Doctor and the woman moved away, hearing Tom's sidelong comment to a haggard looking Harry, "Does she remind you of anyone?" They shared a knowing look before Harry caught sight of Chakotay and both men cringed sheepishly before slowly heading towards him.

Chakotay of course knew who they were referring to in comparison and gave the woman a cursory glance. Yes, she was very attractive, stunning even, but to compare the Doctor's companion to _her_, in his mind, was too big a stretch. _She_ had been utterly unaware of her beauty, outer and inner, while this woman was using it unashamedly, albeit in a charming and good natured manner, obviously enjoying the paternalistic affections of the Doctor that had come close to suffocating _her _more headstrong spirit…

His trail of thought was interrupted by the weight of hand on his shoulder and he looked down to see Captain Harry Kim's impossibly aged and strained face looking at him with sorrowful sympathy. "I'm so sorry I missed the funeral Chakotay…" He said thickly.

Chakotay gave an involuntary shudder at the word. "I…understood." He said with painful honesty before shrugging the younger man's hand off. "You were far away, on a mission, she…" He gulped, "…would've understood that, you know that."

Tom nodded solemnly, "Yeah, remember how much she wanted to come with you, when we first came back?"

Harry swallowed hard, "Yeah, I remember. I told her she'd get plenty of chances…" He stopped and gave Chakotay a pained apologetic look, but their old First Officer had already turned away and was walking towards what was rapidly becoming a confrontation between B'Elanna and the Admiral.

"I can't see _why_ she can't come home to her family once in a while!" B'Elanna openly fumed at Janeway, "Especially after what happened, she's still heartbroken after missing the funeral…" Spotting Chakotay out of the corner of her eye, that sentence died on her lips and she had to content herself with glaring violently at Janeway.

"B'Elanna…" Janeway started impatiently, stung by the reference to the funeral. "You know as well as I do how hard we _both_ worked to get Miral that position! If she left her post for too often, Korath would lose all respect for her…"

"Who are you to talk of respect?" B'Elanna spat hotly, turning back to the buffet table as Janeway stalked away and Chakotay approached. "I'm sorry Chakotay, I didn't mean to bring all that up, I'm just so _scared_ for Miral now…" A sob caught in her throat and she flinched in surprise as Chakotay's arm, shaking violently with suppressed emotion, went around her shoulders.

"You have to let her live her life…while she has it B'Elanna." He whispered so painfully that B'Elanna hugged him, nearly crying when she felt how thin he was, even the shadow of himself he'd been projecting for years was now fading away…

The chink of glasses interrupted their reverie and they looked up to the platform for Reg's final toast, Chakotay at least had tuned out the rest of it. "…And so I'd like to propose a toast, to the Voyager family standing here tonight!"

"To family!" Everyone echoed enthusiastically.

"And to those not here to celebrate with us." The Admiral added in a quiet command.

The room fell silent, until that is Chakotay's glass shattered in his hand.

* * *

><p>He walked up the steep hill with an odd clarity of mind and grief which only washed over him here, despite the effect the climb had on his by now arthritic joints. The grass was wet, the overcast sky had obviously produced rain whilst he'd been at the party, several blossoms of the mature cherry blossom under which he now stood had been pulled free and were being gently blown over the two plain plaques which were set side by side into the ground near the tree's strong roots. The first read:<p>

_**Seven of Nine**_

_**24**__**th**__** of June 2348-15**__**th**__**of May 2380**_

_**Beloved wife, mother and friend**_

_**Now at rest among the stars, may your spirit return here and find peace at last**_

The second, obviously recently laid, with slowly dying flower bouquets placed lovingly around it, read:

_**Freya Ixchel Kotay**_

_**31**__**st**__** of October 2378-29**__**th**__**of January 2403**_

_**Adored daughter**_

_**Born among the stars, may your spirit now know them all and return here**_

Of course, Seven wasn't actually buried here, she had been left behind in the Delta Quadrant like so many other members of Voyager's crew but it had never seemed right to him that her only memorial was a dust covered plaque in the Voyager museum and he truly believed her sprit was here, where he and Freya had come yearly to lay flowers. It had proven an odd comfort to him that their daughter wasn't alone here, beautiful and serene through the spot was, especially now with a rainbow breaking through the clouds. He let tears slide down his face as he sank to his knees and his hand struck the still relatively fresh earth around Freya's grave, people kept telling him the pain would ease, but he knew from hard experience that whether the loss had happened three months ago or twenty three years ago, the pain remained a constant, whether you learned to live with it or not, and he was tired of trying. "Don't worry; I'm going to fix this." He murmured determinedly as he watched fresh rain bounce off the headstones.

**A/n: So, what do you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! :D I'm really nervous about this one! I used the name "Freya Ixchel" because Freya was the Viking goddess of love and beauty and Ixchel (pronounced ishchel with a very soft sh) was the Mayan mother goddess. It just struck me as a name Seven and Chakotay would choose, I hope you agree.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/n: Okay, I'll admit that part of the reason I've been so lax with my updating this week is because I've been toiling over this chapter. It was very difficult to write so PLEASE tell me what you think! **

"Pwetty Mama!" Freya Kotay exclaimed delightedly, unable to tear her eager eyes away from the mesmerising planet of lilac and aquamarine clouds before her.

Seven of Nine smiled indulgently down at her eighteen month old daughter and joined her at the viewport. As she lifted her daughter into her arms with practised ease, she ran an affectionate hand through the toddler's silken hair; the colour and thickness; not unlike that of a lion's mane, was a chore in itself, and Seven could, quite happily, spend hours running a comb through the delicate tendrils. "It is pretty isn't it?" she agreed, "That's where I'm going tomorrow on my away mission."

Freya's eyes, which according to everyone else on the ship were identical to Seven's own, something she didn't agree with; (they lit up just like Chakotay's when she smiled), shot up to her mother's face. "In a shuddle?" she asked excitedly, bouncing around so much that Seven had difficulty holding on to her.

"Yes, in a shuttle." Seven replied with a soft laugh as she settled down on the couch, Freya in her lap.

"I come?" Freya asked hopefully.

"No baby, you can't come, it's too dangerous." Seven said firmly.

Freya's cheery smile instantly transformed into a troubled frown. "Dangewous?" she mumbled, her lower lip shaking. "You no go Mama!" she said insistently, "Stay wiv me an Papa."

Seven cuddled her close, wishing she'd never said anything. "I'll be fine baby, it's different for me, you're just too little."

Freya wasn't going to let it go that easily, "_Why_ you go?" she questioned tearfully.

"We're going to see if the planet has a special mineral to help Voyager get back to Earth. The Captain asked me, it's important…"

Freya began to cry outright just as her father, Commander Chakotay, entered their family quarters; his handsome face creasing in concern when he saw the tearstained face of his daughter, and the strained one of his wife. "What's wrong angel?" he asked gently as he knelt down beside Freya.

"Mama…go…way…" Freya choked out inconsolably through sobs.

Chakotay shot Seven a questioning look, who sighed and muttered under her breath, "The away mission."

"Ah…" Chakotay breathed in understanding and pulled Freya onto his knee, smiling at her reassuringly, "Freya honey, your Mama isn't going anywhere for long, we'd miss each other too much wouldn't we?"

Seven smiled as she watched Freya calm down and nod slowly. "I'll be back in time to give you lunch my love, don't worry. You and Papa just get to play by yourselves for a little while."

Freya brightened a little at that, looping her slight arms around Chakotay's neck. "Pway kadikot?" she asked with a pleading look and a voice full of anticipation.

Chakotay chuckled and gave Seven a teasing glance over their daughter's head. "Only _your_ daughter would understand and want to play kadiskot at a year and a half!"

"She's yours too!" Seven replied in the same teasing tone before turning back to Freya, "Maybe Papa will read to you instead sweetheart."

"Books!" Freya cheered, tugging impatiently at her father's uniform. "Now Papa, now!"

"After your bath." Chakotay finally compromised after he and Seven had recovered from their laugher.

It was a long, bubbly bath and two books later before the couple were alone again, curled up together on the couch. "Do you think she'll be alright? I do not enjoy the thought of leaving her…" Seven murmured into her husband's warm chest while biting her lip anxiously.

"Her reaction was normal Seven; you haven't been on an away mission since you fell pregnant with her." Chakotay told her gently, his grip tightening around her as he felt her sigh heavily, "You don't have to go if you don't want to. I can speak to the Captain…"

Seven ran her fingers affectionately over his rugged jaw line and kissed him softly, "I am the only crewmember who knows how to properly scan for Mineral 591, it really could assist the engines a great deal Chakotay, sometimes we must put aside our personal preferences for necessity's sake."

"I know." Chakotay replied heavily, "I can't say I like the idea of you flying down to that hellhole, deceptively beautiful though it is, the Doctor keeps saying how radioactive it is down there…"

"Yes, Zeta radiation. The shields of the shuttle have been reinforced." Seven replied tightly, sensing his unease. "We'll take every precaution." She assured him soothingly, shifting closer as the smile of a new, more pleasant thought, spread across her face. "During my maintenance today, the Doctor informed me that my body has recovered sufficiently from carrying Freya, that we can try again whenever we wish."

Chakotay beamed at his wife with an uncertain joy, "Really? Are you sure?" Seven laughed softly and kissed in reply, giggling as he picked her up, bridal style. "I suppose we'd better start practising then." He whispered huskily as he carried her to their bedroom.

* * *

><p>It happened suddenly, the insistent beep of the comm. badge which was to herald the end of this bright phase of Chakotay's life. He lifted his head up from where he was helping Freya paint a picture for Seven when she returned; she'd been gone less than an hour. He silently despaired at the state of their living quarters; the volume of red paint and previously discarded crafts paper was getting to the 'alarming' level. Pushing these negative thoughts from his head, he distractedly tapped his comm. badge; "Chakotay here." He said coolly as he saved Freya's hair from being dipped in a pot of green paint in the nick of time.<p>

"Chakotay…you need to come to the Bridge…_now_." It was the sheer simplicity of the words, in the end, that made Chakotay's blood run ice cold. He was accustomed to the Captain's unceremonious summons by now, and didn't set much store by them. Her tone was strangled, oddly so, and her usual, prim, self control was now all but gone. That was enough to send him surging to his feet, barely having enough presence of mind to ask Icheb to watch Freya before bolting away towards the Bridge.

"What's happening?" he gasped out breathlessly as he rammed his way out of the turbolift and into the centre of the Bridge, having to catch himself as his legs turned to water at the sight on the viewscreen. The planet, that deceptively beautiful gas giant that seemed to effortlessly combine all the colours of the rainbow, was imploding. The sight was so sickeningly hypnotising that it took a few seconds for Chakotay's tongue to regain the power of speech. "Are they back, the away team?" He flinched at how terrified his own voice sounded; of course she was back, where else could she be?

He could feel the crew's eyes burning into his back and could taste the anguish and pity in the dead air around him. The sound of Harry's gulp pounded cruelly into his ears as the newly appointed Lieutenant spoke, "No Commander, there was a catastrophic change in the planet's core; the shuttle is still down there…"

"Well, _find_ it!" Chakotay snapped, unnerved by the brutal, hysterical edge in his voice.

"I'm trying to Chakotay…" B'Elanna forced out through gritted teeth, her body sagging in momentary relief as she read her console. "I found them!" she shouted in relief before a new panic crept into her tone, "Their warp is down…and shields, the radiation is flooding in…"

The Captain's taunt features turned grey with horror. "Beam them up now!"

"I've been trying!" B'Elanna retorted in anguished frustration, but her own feelings faded into insignificance when she saw the unadulterated agony in Chakotay's eyes as he growled wordlessly, slamming his fist so hard into a nearby console she was sure she heard a bone break. As a consequence, she nearly sobbed when a flicker of hope revealed itself. "I've locked onto them, they're in Sickbay!"

The words hadn't fully left her mouth before Chakotay bounded towards Sickbay, ignorant of the worried crowd following behind him. In reality the journey only took a couple of minutes at most, but for Chakotay it seemed like a lifetime, fear sapping all the power from his limbs. The relief of stepping into Sickbay was painfully short-lived; the first thing he laid his eyes on was the Doctor covering two obviously dead bodies with reverential care. "No…" He croaked out before a sob stifled his voice.

The Doctor twisted around to face him, stepping closer, his eyes filled with grief and pity that Chakotay chose to ignore to preserve what little remained of his senses. "Commander…" The Doctor began, grasping his shoulder, but Chakotay's eyes became distant as he finally saw the limp figure sprawled over the biobed furthest from the doorway, so covered in unknown grime that it took the sight of a mangled implant for him to know for certain it was her.

"_Seven_!" he cried out hoarsely, relief freeing his heart to thud in his ears as he saw her chest heave to take a breath. Blindly he ran forward, his body crashing into an unseen forcefield that surrounded her bed. He glared viciously at the Doctor in disbelief, "Doctor, what are you _doing_?" He shouted in frustration, "Why aren't you helping her?" He kicked out at the shield, "I'm her husband! She needs me with her!" Hot tears began to blur his vision but he wiped away at them angrily as he met the Doctor's agonised eyes. "Well?" he snarled when the Doctor remained silent for a moment.

The Doctor visibly braced himself. "I've made her as comfortable as I can Commander, there's nothing more I can do for her." He gulped repeatedly, his courage leaving him. "They…They all received a lethal dose of radiation, on top of their other horrible injuries. Only her implants are keeping her alive now and they're damaged beyond repair…" Despite his still professional tone, tears began to stream unhindered down his cheeks. "She's…She's dying Chakotay…"

Chakotay's world began to spin, his organs lurching horribly in his stomach. "No!" He cried out in denial, shoving the Doctor's restraining hands away. "You're_ lying_! You just don't want to try!"

Hurt and anger burned across the Doctor's face but he took a deep breath for Seven's sake, she'd want her husband to be supported right now, it was his last duty to her as her Doctor and friend. "I'm so sorry…" He murmured heavily, his whole body slumping in defeat as he backed away from Chakotay's grief inflamed eyes.

The anger drained away from Chakotay as his eyes flickered desperately between the Doctor's desolate face and his wife's still body, replaced by a bleak hopelessness that tortured his heart. "Lower the shield Doctor, let me go to her." He whispered brokenly, his hand shaking as it rested on the forcefield in wait.

The Doctor shook his head, "No Commander, I can't let you. Any more than a few minutes exposure to that radiation and you'll fall ill…"

"Has she got any more than a few minutes left?" Chakotay retorted, his voice cracking as he realised what he'd just said. The waver in the Doctor's resolute expression gave him his answer. "I won't let her…die _alone_ Doctor!" He choked out, his voice hoarse with a tumult of indescribable emotions. "Deactivate the forcefield or I'll deactivate _you_ and do it myself."

The Doctor sighed. "Three minutes." He muttered in a low voice as he pressed a button and the forcefield dissipated.

Chakotay nodded abruptly and strode up to the biobed, hearing the hiss as the forcefield reactivated behind him. "Seven?" he whispered, reaching out and seizing her blackened hand like a lifeline, as if by holding her he could keep death at bay. He was shocked to find her skin ice cold, for once colder than the implants embedded within it. Nausea overwhelmed him, and not for the first time that day; fear coursed cripplingly through his veins as he realised that he may have arrived too late. Then, as if his touch had pulled her back from the brink, her body heaved in another breath, though he could see it took her as much effort as running a marathon.

"Chakotay…" She whispered, her paper thin lids fluttering open as her bloodless lips moved, curving into a relieved smile, as if she'd been waiting for him.

"Hey…" He breathed softly near her ear as he ran a desperate hand through her hair, only hours ago a youthful, lustrous gold but now strangely colourless, as if a winter's frost had settled upon her. "Oh my love…" He forced the small words past the lump in his throat as he climbed onto the biobed and pulled her gently into his lap, encircling his arms protectively around her.

She shivered against him as she met his eyes, panic suddenly filling her own. "Radi…Radiation…please go…" She pleaded.

Chakotay shook his head resolutely, "No. I'm not going anywhere. The Doctor gave me permission, I'll be fine sweetheart, don't worry."

She relaxed again, her eyes dimming for a moment before tears began to slide weakly down her cheeks, wetting his caressing hand. "I told Freya that…I'd come back…tell her…" She gasped in pain but continued on, "I'm sorry…so sorry…"

"You _are_ back, there's _nothing_ to apologise for, do you hear me Seven?" Chakotay said harshly, sobs beginning to rack his own chest as he bent over her.

She smiled distantly as her icy fingers traced his tattoo. "I love you…" She mumbled faintly, "You…gave me back…my life…"

Chakotay rubbed at his streaming eyes in frustration so he could see her clearly, "I love you too…so much Seven…" The words were barely out of his mouth before he felt her body shudder and fall utterly still.

He collapsed forward, clutching her body to his as he silently begged the soul he knew was gone to return. "Chakotay, you'll make yourself ill, for Freya's sake please…" A voice, he'd never know exactly whose, filled his mind and he let go off consciousness, allowing his grieving crewmates to drag him away to the Doctor's care.

* * *

><p>Admiral Kathryn Janeway was so absorbed in sorting out the curriculum for her new Starfleet Academy class that she jumped violently when the doorbell rang unexpectedly. With a small shake of her head, she reluctantly left her cluttered desk and headed out to the hallway, whoever was visiting her at this time of night better have a good reason! Her exasperation faded a little when she peeked through the door's view hole and she quickly opened the door. "Chakotay…" She breathed in shock, he was the last person she'd expected to see, normally after any crew gathering he fled back to the solitude of his ranch in Mexico.<p>

"Kathryn." He greeted curtly, stepping past her and closing the door behind him. "Is Mark here?"

"No." She replied in bemusement, disturbed by the odd look in her eyes. "He's at a conference in Munich tonight. What's wrong?" He frowned at her bitterly and she sighed, "You want to talk about it?"

"No." He replied shortly, looking as her with determined eyes. "I want to know what your plan was."

She flinched, "What plan?" she asked tightly.

His fists clenched as he glared at her impatiently. "You _know_ what plan Kathryn, why didn't you go through with it?"

Janeway sighed heavily and moved back from him, "I decided it was too risky, not to mention highly illegal and unethical. There was no guarantee of anything turning out for the better anyway."

"You believed in it enough last year, when you shielded the Flyer up to the hilt and posted Miral with those Klingons so you could get the machine." He reminded her darkly.

Janeway swallowed, "It was different back then, my perspective has changed."

"Why?" Chakotay asked sharply, "Nothing's changed for the better, things have gotten _worse_. Tuvok's still ill, Seven's still dead, and now Freya too…" His voice cracked but he quickly controlled himself, his face stiffening. "I'd have thought you'd have _more_ reason to do it now more than ever! Or is it because Mark finally returned to you, you suddenly think everything's fine!" He snapped.

Janeway flinched as if he'd slapped her. "That is _not_ fair!" She stood nose to nose with him, glaring hotly. "If I remember rightly, you told me it as too risky, that it would _disrespect_ the dead, that it would risk the _entire_ Voyager crew…" She trailed off, remembering the pain in his eyes as he'd told her those hard truths. "What's changed your mind?"

"Let's say my perspective has changed." Chakotay flung back resentfully as she threw his own doubts back in his face. He sighed heavily, rubbing his temples. "Look Kathryn, I was wrong to give up on them, please help me create another chance."

His voice was so sincere that Janeway's resolve crumpled and she disappeared into her office returning with a PADD, which she handed to him. "All you need to know is in here. You'll need to get tetrion radiation protection from the Doctor, he'll be suspicious, but just say you're going on a classified mission."

He took the PADD tightly in his hand, smiling at her in relief and gratitude. "Thank you."

She shook her head, wincing in fear as he turned back towards the door. "Chakotay, you know that this would be a one way trip?" she asked tersely, if he really was going to go through with this then she'd better make sure he knew all of the hard facts.

He nodded. "I know, but we all have to go sometime, you and I know that better than anyone." Without another word he walked out, leaving Janeway alone to ponder what she'd just set in motion.

**A/n: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! :D**


	3. Chapter 3

Freya hummed quietly away to herself as she finally reached home after a long day at school. She was relieved to find the door unlocked; she'd been dreading rummaging through her bag, which was stuffed to bursting with all the requirements of a straight A grade senior student, for the door key she'd hurriedly flung into it that morning as she ran for the bus. She sighed regretfully at the memory; she really would have to give up the habit of pushing the snooze button on her alarm clock on a school day! "Papa, I'm home!" she called through the house as she shrugged her bag off her shoulder and kicked it into the corner to be unpacked later. Surprise prickled at her when she didn't hear her father's usual welcoming response, he had to be here if the door was unlocked… Despite herself, worry nibbled at her heart; her father may still be working full time at the university quite happily but he _was _sixty seven and several incidents on Voyager over the years had taken a toll on his health, what if… "Papa!" she called again anxiously as she walked into their large living room, smiling in relief when she saw him sitting just outside the room's open double doors on one of the padded patio chairs, holding a PADD in his lap. Coming up behind him she gave him a gentle peck on the cheek. "There you are! Didn't you hear me calling?" she asked as she flopped down onto the neighbouring chair, contentedly breathing in a deep lungful of the pristine air as her eyes drank in the stunning desert view of the valley below them. Moving down here was the best decision she and her father had ever made; compared to the dirty bustle of San Francisco, this place was so peaceful it almost reminded her of the endless carpet of stars she'd loved to watch fly past on Voyager.

"I heard you." Chakotay replied stiffly, his tone causing his daughter to look at him questioningly. He sighed heavily as he handed her the PADD he was holding, "What is this?" he asked, more sharply than he'd intended.

Freya's face paled as her application to Starfleet Academy stared unabashedly back at her. "Papa, I was going to tell you…" She started to explain but stopped as she saw how white his face was with fear and anger, "How did you find out?"

He exhaled angrily as he stood up, "Apparently if you don't turn eighteen before the school year starts you need a parent to sign your application form."

"Oh." Freya muttered, cursing her careers advisor under her breath as she watched her father's fists clench in built up frustration. "What were you really expecting me to do? You know I've always wanted to join Starfleet!" she defended herself hotly against the silent rebuke in his dark eyes.

He frowned at her disapprovingly, his eyes ablaze with discontent. "I expected you to come to me first so that we could discuss it properly!"

"You mean so you could talk me out of it!" Freya retorted.

Hurt flashed across Chakotay's still handsome face. "When have you ever not been able to talk to me?" he asked softly.

Freya's face fell guiltily, she was well aware that she was lucky to have such a close and loving relationship with her father. "Never Papa." She admitted. "But I knew that you were going to fight me on this, was I wrong?"

Chakotay's eyes shifted away from his daughter's intensely earnest blue ones for a moment. "No." He answered reluctantly but honestly.

"Papa, I know you'd worry, but remember that I was born on Voyager and lived there for over fourteen years! I know what I'm getting into…"

"No Freya, you don't!" Chakotay snapped, his voice cracking, "You have no idea what you could go through…"

"Icheb and Naomi are already qualified and doing fine, Miral loves it at the Academy and Autumn Harrow has already been accepted. Even if I never go on a deep space mission it's still one of the best schools in the quadrant for science study…" Her tone hardened as she saw him shaking his head at her, "Why don't you of all people understand why I want to go? You went against your father's wishes to join Starfleet, you practically ran away from home!"

A muscle jumped in Chakotay's cheek as her words hit a nerve. "Well, if I'd known when I was your age what I'd go through for Starfleet's sake I'd maybe have listened to him!"

"You don't mean that." Freya replied resolutely even as she stared into his pain-filled eyes, "If you hadn't ended up on Voyager you never would've met Mama or had me…" She gasped as she saw him sink into another chair and take his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking violently. She had to press her own lips together as her own filled with tears of sympathy. It was rare to see the aging, but still raw grief, overwhelm her father like just then; seeing him collapse inward like this shocked her; he'd always put on a doggedly strong front for her. "Papa, I didn't mean it like that…" She mumbled thickly, "I know that you loved Mama more than anything and wouldn't ever wish that you hadn't met her…"

Chakotay gulped hard as he lifted his head back up and met her shimmering eyes. "Come here angel." He murmured, ushering her into his arms which she sank into with relief, curling up in his lap just as she always had from earliest childhood and pressing her face against his quivering throat. It was times like this that he had the greatest difficulty seeing her as the seventeen year old young woman she was now and not the utterly dependent and trusting face of the newborn baby she'd been when he's first held her, with Seven looking on. "I'll be careful Papa…" She mumbled bravely near his ear, "I'm not leaving you yet, _ever_, I promise…"

He sighed heavily, suddenly exhausted now that his anger had left him. "You can't promise me that darling." He told her softly, moving her face with his hand until he could see her young face fully, it was so like her mother's, especially now with that earnest, yet naïve, determination in her blue eyes. "Just promise me you'll make your life a happy one, alright?"

Freya studied his face intently for a moment before a smile broke through her tears, "Thank you Papa." She murmured gratefully as she hugged him.

* * *

><p>The creeping shadows of the night had shrunk into something resembling daylight in the dim morning sun. Chakotay sat down in his living room with a PADD in his hand, repeatedly mulling over the words spoken to him less than twenty four hours before by Admiral Janeway; he ignored the plan that he'd received from her, having tossed it onto the nearby table. Instead he gazed resignedly at the collection of much-loved photographs he'd accumulated over the, decidedly long years. Firstly a group photograph of Voyager's senior officers, taken long ago when Seven had still been considered a drone, stiff, alone, separate, and when Tuvok had still had his health. Then he moved on to his wedding photograph, both himself and Seven were wearing matching, beaming, love-filled smiles, standing as one. There were two many pictures of Freya to count; Seven always had been more willing to make a memory of Freya than of herself, once he'd found her camera shyness funny, but now he wished… He cut that thought off as his eyes settled one of his last with Freya, her graduation from the Academy, standing beside him fully decked out in an Ensign's uniform. How many of those happy moments was he willing to change forever? No, if it worked, if it really worked, there would be countless more happy moments created, happy years that had been stolen here.<p>

Moving stiffly he stood up and activated the phone. The Doctor's face appeared almost immediately, looking more than a little startled to see him. "Chakotay? Why are you phoning so early? Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm fine." Chakotay said calmly. "I'm just hoping the Admiral has told you what I need and that you can get it for me."

"Yes, I've just finished talking to her. An experimental radiation inoculation for a classified mission Chakotay? With your health record, I don't think that's wise…"

"That's my decision." Chakotay reminded him sharply. "When can you have it ready?"

"The day after tomorrow at the earliest. I want you to come in for a physical before I give it to you though. You're not on some Starfleet timetable are you?"

"No, but I've been waiting for this a long time." Chakotay admitted, "I'll see you then."

**A/n: PLEASE REVIEW! :D**


	4. Chapter 4

Chakotay felt an unexpected torrent of nostalgia overwhelm him as he stepped into the dim interior of the Delta Flyer, he hadn't realised how many memories were focused around its cabin; crash landings, encounters with Borg, playing poker with a clueless Neelix and a jovial Tom, blurting out a marriage proposal to Seven after a particularly stressful away mission… Where had all the time gone? He wondered, a hint of a saddened smile flickering across his lips as he pushed away thoughts of the past always lurking at the back of his mind and focused for now on the present. The cabin had undergone many subtle changes since he'd last been on board, new control panels were embedded into the old consoles, their cornucopia of glowing buttons just one small sign of how far things had moved forward in the thirty some years since the Voyager crew had designed and built the ship from scratch. Slowly he headed towards the pilot seat, sinking into it with a heavy sigh, the sound of which was overtaken by a loud creak that made him smirk. Obviously the geniuses at Starfleet Engineering had neglected to replace the seats during the Flyer's extensive refit, Tom would be livid if he knew, it had been a long standing joke that Tom had spent more time designing the seats, to be perfect for napping of course, than any other detail of the ship!

"She's changed a great deal since you last commanded her Chakotay." Admiral Janeway's voice resonating behind him made him jump, "Tritanium armour plating in addition to the isometric shielding, enhanced warp engines, multi-phasic torpedoes, and of course the neural interface for flying…"

Chakotay let her words wash over him without paying full attention, instead reaching underneath the console and smiling at what he found there, an old scorch mark from a phaser. The day it had happened felt like yesterday, he and Seven had been on a trade mission with a species who, unbeknownst to them, had a visceral hatred of the Borg, former or not. One on-board fire fight and a quick getaway later, he'd impulsively proposed to a guilt-ridden Seven. He still grinned like a teenager at the thought of the passionate make-out session they'd had afterwards under this very console. They'd been banned from going on away missions alone together after that, the Captain citing as her reasoning their habit of becoming "unprofessionally distracted" and "risking diplomatic incidents". "I would argue nothing's changed much, I still trust the Flyer to get me there in one piece." Chakotay replied to the Admiral as she finally fell silent and looked at him questioningly.

"It will still be a hard journey…" The Admiral murmured tersely, "Did the Doctor give you the inoculations?"

"Yes, with reservations. Even with no details of my mission he was still pretty against it, but I talked him round." Chakotay answered distractedly as he began to prepare the Flyer's systems for flight.

"Anyone in their right mind would be against this…" Janeway muttered under her breath, but Chakotay heard her anyway and twisted around to face her, his expression stonily calm.

"Anyone in their right mind would've settled their crew on some M-Class planet in the Delta Quadrant rather than set out on a perilous odyssey back to the Alpha Quadrant." He reminded her wryly, sighing as she continued to look uncertain, "Look Kathryn, you've done as I asked, just leave now if you feel uncomfortable and don't look back."

Janeway bit her lip as she stepped back from him, heaving a sigh as her hand clenched nervously around the console. "It was my idea, remember. I know all the things that could go wrong." She pointed out, more sharply than she'd intended. "I wouldn't be your friend, or respecting the memories of Seven and Freya, if I wasn't worried."

Despite flinching at her use of his wife and daughter's names to dissuade him from saving them, Chakotay put his hand over hers with magnanimous understanding. "Trust that I want this to work, I _need_ this to work more than anything in my life, do you understand that?"

Janeway gave a slow deliberate nod as she retreated to the Flyer's still open door and climbed out. "Godspeed Commander." She murmured in reply and as her final goodbye.

* * *

><p>You've been cleared to leave orbit Commander." A space-traffic controller informed Chakotay as he flew the Flyer through the last of Earth's thick, candy floss like, white clouds.<p>

"Thank you Lieutenant." Chakotay responded, already dialling in the co-ordinates of the Klingon moon where the key to his mission could be found.

"Travel safely." The lieutenant replied politely before the comm. link clicked off.

Chakotay pondered his words as the Flyer pulled free from Earth's atmosphere and soared into the star sprinkled void of space above. Safety. The Voyager crew had always been promised a better life, safety, happiness, if they managed to get back to Earth, but were such feelings really dependent on a place? As he looked down at the silently spinning blue and green speckled marble of a planet down below with mixed emotions, he couldn't help but think back to the day when Voyager had finally reached its promised haven…

* * *

><p>Balancing a glass of celebratory champagne in one hand and a stack of PADDs in the other, Chakotay walked into his quarters with tired steps, he'd been foolish to assume that their arrival back home would mean relaxation, Starfleet wanted every file on their journey sent to them before Voyager's landing gear even touched Earth's soil, and to be honest all the excitement was emotionally draining…<p>

He paused as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and saw Freya curled up on the sofa nearest the room's large viewport, hugging her knees tight against her chest as she stared fixatedly out at the planet they were rapidly heading towards, Earth. "Freya honey?" he asked in surprise, "I thought you'd be celebrating with your friends in the Mess Hall."

She jumped slightly at the unexpected sound of his voice and whipped her head around to face him. "I don't really feel like it today, parties can get a little boring after a few days of them." She answered quietly.

Chakotay smiled at her teasingly, "I never thought I'd hear a fourteen year old say that." He remarked with a chuckle as he came closer. She only summoned the weakest of smiles at the comment and as he read her expression he knew something was wrong. Her face was guarded, her jaw tensely set, but really it was her eyes that revealed something to him, they had that pinched, deep thinking and anxious look, so reminiscent of Seven at her most uncertain and vulnerable, that his heart clenched in worry and sympathy. "What's wrong angel?" he asked softly.

Freya stiffened. "Nothing." She retorted sulkily, even as she twisted her tawny hair fretfully in her fingers.

Chakotay sighed as he sat down next to her on the sofa. "Nothing must be pretty bad." He commented knowingly as he gently put his arm around her shoulders

He got a momentarily withering glare in reply to that before she gave in and cuddled into his side, not too proud to take reassurance she so desperately needed. "What's going to happen to us now Papa?" she asked after a few silent minutes.

"Well…" Chakotay pondered for a second, "It'll be like the Captain explained, we'll get down there, the adults will be debriefed, then there'll be some more parties I assume…"

"I meant in the long term Papa." Freya interrupted sharply, "What if they attack you for being a Maquis? They used to hunt you down…"

"Freya…" Chakotay cut her off seriously and clasped her face, "I don't want you worrying about that, the Maquis were granted an amnesty before you were even born and anyway, if I do face anything I'll deal with it myself, okay? We'll just buy a house somewhere and get settled in…"

Tears brimmed at Freya's eyes now, "I don't know if I _want_ to get settled in! I've always lived _here_!" she burst out suddenly, "Wh…What if…I don't like it…" she choked out, rubbing at her streaming eyes in frustration.

Chakotay stroked her hair and hugged her close, "You probably won't like it straight away, nobody likes change at first, that's normal. But I can promise you that if you give it a chance to be home, it will be. Earth and the Federation will give you so many more opportunities that you never would've had here, you just need to explore them."

Freya sniffed loudly. "What you're saying is that I'll need to adapt?" she murmured wryly.

Chakotay swallowed the lump that sprang into his throat. "Yes, that's in essence what I'm saying."

She nodded against his chest as she sighed, before abruptly asking, "Papa, are you sad?"

"About what?" Chakotay queried, glancing worriedly down at her.

Freya gulped hard then elaborated in a whisper, "About Mama not being here?"

She could feel his chest tightening with grief under her cheek as he answered, "I'm always sad about her not being with us, I loved her…deeply, and still do. Yes, it's sad that she can't see what she worked her whole liberated life to reach but…" He stopped, stroking her hair again, "You know, your Mama told me more than once that she'd didn't care much about Earth for its own sake, she'd never lived there even as a child, it was "irrelevant" to her, but do you know what else she said?"

"What?" Freya asked in eager curiosity, "Why did she work so hard to help Voyager if she found Earth irrelevant?"

Chakotay smiled fondly at the memory, "She said, "It is not seeing Earth that will please me, in fact I will most likely be afraid, I draw pleasure from the thought of seeing the crew, my Collective, reach their goal, and seeing their happiness, that will make me happy.""

"I think that's how I feel too Papa, is that okay?" Freya murmured softly.

"Anything you feel is okay honey." He replied thickly as he kissed her forehead.

* * *

><p>Admiral Janeway gulped down the last dregs of cold coffee and decided to drag herself away from her office, Mark would be worried sick and it was too late to fret about Chakotay now anyway, several years too late. Maybe if she'd discouraged that relationship even more strongly, held firm…<p>

"Admiral." The sound of the Doctor's voice directly behind her almost made her yelp in shock before she wheeled angrily around.

"Doctor, what are you doing here at this time of night?" she asked shrilly.

"I could ask you the same thing, except I know your reason, you're worried about Chakotay." The hologram pressed.

"Why…Why would I be worried about him?" she responded shakily.

"Because he's doing something dangerous. I spoke to Starfleet Intelligence; they've never signed him up for any mission, much less a covert one. He severed his links with Starfleet as soon as Voyager was decommissioned." The Doctor replied coldly. "What is he doing? He isn't a well man Admiral, he should be taking it easy, not chasing some farfetched…" He stopped when he saw the tears dripping down Janeway's face. "Admiral?" he asked, shocked.

"Oh Doctor, I think I've made a terrible mistake…"


	5. Chapter 5

**A/n: Hi, everyone! My inspiration finally came back for this story. I owe a huge thank you to my beta xXBrightsideBumblebeeXx for taking a break in her busy scedule to reassure me that this chapter was publishable.**

Ensign Miral Paris felt an anxious sigh rattle in her chest as she paced around the entrance to Korath's base, which was built into a desolate cavern. The aging Klingon maintained he'd chosen this location for strategic reasons but Miral suspected that, until recently at least, the source of his reasoning was financial, not practical. Her sensitive quarter-Klingon hearing picked up a disapproving grunt from the nearest guard, towering over the cave mouth with sharpened Bat'Leth in hand. Obligingly, to avoid losing face in front of those who were already disgruntled by her presence here, as they had been for the last six months, she swallowed her apprehensive sighs and instead kicked up the dust around her feet. The guard gave her the smallest of approving nods, frustration at being left in the lurch by a superior was more acceptable in Klingon eyes than expressing worry.

Really she should have been feeling relieved that it was Chakotay who was coming rather than Admiral Janeway. In a personal sense she was infinitely closer to her surrogate uncle than to Voyager's former Captain, but she found that her deeper insight into the former's character was a large part of what was making her so at ill at ease. She just couldn't fathom why he had suddenly usurped the Admiral as the driver of this mission, the details of which she still wasn't sure of. Chakotay had had absolutely nothing to do with her appointment here, in fact she'd gathered through the Voyager crew's antiquated but still functioning gossip mill that he'd not spoken to the Admiral for months afterwards. So why was he so involved now? Even to the point of retrospectively accepting the promotion to Captain he'd bluntly rejected in the days following Voyager's homecoming, a decision which had upset Freya at the time… She bit her lip painfully at the thought of Freya, all this had to stem from the lost of her oldest friend. Her heart still grieved, with guilt, unfounded or not, fuelling the feeling. It had been herself who encouraged Freya to defy her father's fears and join Starfleet as she had. If she felt weighed down by such emotion, she didn't even want to imagine how much Chakotay was suffering…

The long awaited buzz of the transporter shoved these thoughts to the back of her mind: Chakotay appeared before her. Her face transformed from its happy, if business like, smile to a look of shock and disbelief as she took in his frighteningly diminished figure."Uncle Chakotay…" She choked out brokenly as she stumbled forward to unthinkingly embrace him, subconsciously wanting to check if this aged ghost of a person was the warm, honourable man she remembered.

He chuckled weakly, his natural smile proving it was indeed he, but the light that had once lit his dark eyes now only lasted a fraction of a second, like a candle left out in a storm. "At ease Cadet." He reminded her, with a mildly amused glance at the affronted guard.

"Oh…" Miral breathed a nervous laugh, "I'm sorry Command…Captain." His "new" rank sounded so odd that she stumbled over it, blushing.

"Don't worry, I'm still getting used to it." He brushed off her apology quickly while tugging at his ill-fitting new uniform. "How are you?" he asked kindly, prickled with guilt that a girl he'd known since birth was so uncomfortable around him.

"I'm good, Korath's been treating me well…" She laughed wryly, "Thanks to the Admiral's bargaining…"

"I don't think so, you've earned your position here." Chakotay corrected her, "I know your parents are so proud of you…"

His face became entrenched with pain for a moment before he disguised it again, but it was enough to bring tears bubbling to Miral's eyes and throat. "I'm so sorry about Freya! I…I tried to get home for the funeral but…" Her voice failed her, the dam of stoicism which had held back her sorrow crumbling abruptly.

Chakotay squeezed the young girl's shoulders. "Don't worry." Miral snapped her head up in confusion at how sure he somehow sounded, "You were her best friend in life, and that's the important thing."

Miral hastily wiped her face, "It wasn't as if we had much of a choice, we were the only teenage girls on Voyager after all." She told him tearfully, repeating an old joke. As luck would have it, Freya had been the last baby girl born on Voyager, the others, five in all, had all been boys, all younger by at least six years. It had been said by a particularly tactless crewmember that Seven's premature death, leaving behind a toddler, had put all of Voyager's couples off having children for a while.

Suddenly, a new arrival in the form of an even bulkier Klingon guard spat out a spiel of what Chakotay assumed were orders at Miral's back. As if a switch had been turned on within her, she spun around and threw back a retort just as virulent. "What was all that about?" he asked curiously, he had to know what kind of situation he was walking into after all.

Miral gave a dramatically exasperated sigh. "Korath is just getting bored." She explaining bitingly, "He doesn't like waiting on "Starfleet P'tachs" apparently." She continued dismissively, "I told him that you were a great warrior, who'd saved my family, and me, in many spectacular battles, thus you can afford to let Korath wait."

Chakotay flashed one of his, now rare, genuine smiles. "You're your mother's daughter, and that's the best kind." He told her fondly, before sudden impatience settled on his features, "Still, I think I've been waiting to do this long enough, so I'm willing to oblige him."

Miral smiled in anticipation of finally finding out what was going on. "That will go down very well Captain. Let's get going."

Chakotay heaved a regretful sigh as he held her back from stepping towards the door, he'd dreaded hurting her like this ever since he'd learned how many hours she'd dedicated at the Admiral's bidding. "I'm sorry Miral, but I need to take it from here, alone."

Miral felt like she'd just been kicked in the gut and it took her several seconds to even partially recover her composure. "With all due respect…" She started stiffly, fighting to keep her anger in check, "I've been working on this for _six _months…"

"I know." Chakotay told her softly, "I don't need your respect right now, I need your forgiveness." He admitted, "But you just can't be involved in this Miral, I'm not saying that because I want to hurt you or because I don't trust you, just to keep you safe from all this, I promise you."

"I'm a Starfleet officer! I can handle whatever…" Miral began to argue before his words had truly sunk in.

"I don't doubt that, but it's the way it has to be." Chakotay told her firmly before letting her go, looking down at her with pleading, saddened eyes. "Your mom and dad have been scared for you since…" He swallowed painfully, "…since Freya passed. Go and see them for a while, okay? I'll relieve you right now."

Despite her conflicted state of mind, Miral could see his concern for her was true, and she suddenly knew that whatever Chakotay was going to do in there, she'd better not be around when he did it. "Okay, I'll…I'll leave right now." She conceded numbly, all of the fire suddenly drained out of her.

"Thank you honey." Chakotay whispered in relief before watching her transport off the surface.

* * *

><p>"I can see you've made good use of Admiral Janeway's…gifts." Chakotay commented languidly as he walked into the main room of Korath's compound and saw how many weapons, and High Council paraphernalia, littered the room.<p>

"Yes…" Korath replied in a slick, ingratiating tone, "She has been very generous, for a member of Starfleet." He practically spat out the word, as he assessed Chakotay with his eyes. "Although I'm glad she finally saw sense and let a man conduct her business for her."

"Actually, it was always my business." Chakotay replied coldly, "I'm the one you're dealing with now."

Korath laughed, "And all the better for it Captain! Women haven't the heads for business, or true warfare!" He guffawed loudly, "Most gain honour by spreading their legs, not that that's a bad thing." He added lewdly.

Chakotay stifled his frown of utter disgust, instead forcing a smile by thinking of all the ways the women he'd known, Kathryn, B'Elanna, and Seven in particular, could kill him in one move. "Speaking of business, where is it Korath?"

Korath grimaced slightly, caught out, and reluctantly pulled away the sheet covering the device Chakotay had come all this way for. "Don't worry it's here, I'm an honourable man, but now that we're here face to face I think some renegotiation is in order…"

"We had a deal." Chakotay said tersely, "You got your seat on the High Council, and immense wealth besides, and I get this." He patted the machine reverently, "There's honour in sticking to those terms." He said in a deadly tone.

"If you're not willing to at least _discuss_ more, then I'm afraid those terms are broken." Korath said nonchalantly, but with a greedy glint in his eyes.

Chakotay thought about this for a moment, "Alright. I'll need to scan the device first though, to check I'm getting what I'm paying for."

"You doubt my honour?" Korath howled in outrage.

"I think we've already been through that." Chakotay muttered as he stepped forward and began to scan the machine, his heart lifting in relief when he read the results. "Maybe you do have a little honour after all…" He mused to Korath, "It's going to work." He waited until triumph had settled on the twisted old Klingon's face before slapping a transporter beacon on the machine. "We have a deal." He concluded with a smile as the transporter beamed both him and his new purchase away.

* * *

><p>"I will kill you for this you Starfleet swindler!" Korath screeched down the comm. line as Chakotay pushed the Flyer to its limit as he sped out of the Klingon's system and towards his preferred coordinates.<p>

He laughed to himself, feeling almost like the young rebel who'd confounded the Cardassians all those years ago, and they had been cleverer then Korath by a long way. Doesn't he realise that someone bartering for a time machine doesn't care if they live or die? He thought to himself as he shut the comm. line off unceremoniously. "Damn!" he growled to himself as phaser fire hit the Flyer's hull a few seconds later.

"Need some help Chakotay?" A new, but very familiar and strained voice echoed through the comm. line.

Instead of the relief he should have expected, Chakotay felt dread and guilt shoot through him at the sound of that voice. "You always did have good timing Harry." He finally answered ruefully.

**A/n: PLEASE REVIEW! :D I'll try not to wait so long to update next time. By the way, is anyone else having trouble receiving FanFiction alerts through their email? I am, so I have to keep checking my profile to see if anyone has updated. Thankfully I can still read your reviews on the review page!**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/n: Hi everyone! This will definitely be my last chapter before I've recovered from my surgery, thanks for the good wishes. I also owe a big thank you once again to xXBrightsideBumblebeeXx for betaing this for me, it was just the reassurance I needed! Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys this new chapter. **

Chakotay blinked painfully as the blinding white flash of Starfleet grade transporter faded and his surroundings were brought into clearer focus. He was standing on the main pad of a standard transporter room, memories of long ago away missions fought for dominance in his mind's eye with reality, although the sheer, brutally uncompromising modernity of this room would've made Voyager look like the quaint museum it now was. Being in a transporter room again wasn't the only nostalgia trigger in the room of course, he met _Captain_ Harry Kim's eyes levelly, his sense of purpose keeping him eerily calm in the face of his old friend's pained disapproval, "It's good to finally see your ship Harry, although I wish it was under…easier circumstances."

Harry sighed slightly, and just as at the reunion Chakotay was struck by how old he looked, but perhaps that was the memory of the boyish Ensign tricking him. "As do I Captain, as do I." He replied in a resigned tone, pointedly referring to Chakotay by his new rank rather than the name he'd long ago earned the right to use. "I think we need to talk." He continued firmly, his tone making it clear that this was not really a request. Chakotay couldn't help but think that Kathryn would be proud. If Harry noticed the wry quirk of his lips this thought brought on, he ignored it and turned to his First Officer, "We'll go to my Ready Room Icheb. You can join us when you've arranged the tractor beam for the Flyer."

"Already under way Captain." Icheb answered perfunctorily, "The Flyer is under our control until you order otherwise."

"Good." Harry responded quietly, although his tone was so heavy it indicated nothing about this situation was _good_ by any means. "Let's go then." He ordered, a tiny wince crossing his features as Chakotay stepped off the pad to be surrounded by three tight lipped security officers, "No, stand down for now." He told them awkwardly, shooting Chakotay an embarrassed glance that, though guarded, showed Chakotay a flicker of the amiable, loyal young man he'd known.

So, as Captain Kim had ordered, the three former crewmates walked through the ship unhindered by others, it was only when they reached the Bridge that anyone was bold enough to try to catch Chakotay's eye. Some of the glances were nervously sympathetic, making Chakotay wonder what exactly Harry had told them about their mission to apprehend him, while others were amusingly awestruck or worse, openly hostile. Chakotay knew why they were curious; he was famous, or infamous depending on perspective, as Voyager's valiant First Officer, as leader of a band of Maquis criminals, as the unashamed lover then husband of a Borg drone… He sighed to himself tiredly as he followed Harry into his Ready Room with Icheb closing up the rear. As soon as the doors had put them out of ear shot of the Bridge, he asked Harry bluntly, "How did you explain all this to your crew?"

Harry flinched, obviously guilty about the deception. Chakotay found he was relieved that Harry hadn't really gotten any better at hiding his emotions; there was something reassuring in that, he'd know where he stood. "I told them you're suffering from a rare neurological condition, one that leaves you confused and disorientated but only a threat to yourself…"

Chakotay's mind flashed back to Korath's puffy, fuming face, "Tell that to the Klingons."

Harry allowed himself a small laugh at that, but his heart obviously wasn't in it. "I intend to." He paused uneasily for a moment, eyeing him as he would a caged animal. "The Admiral, the Doctor, Icheb and I decided to withhold your plan from Starfleet for the moment, keep it in the family."

Family? Chakotay mentally repeated bleakly. My family is gone, dead and buried. "I assume you won't be withholding your thoughts on it from _me _though will you Harry?"

"Of course not!" Harry snapped suddenly, whirling around sharply to face Chakotay dead on. "Why are you doing this?" he asked desperately, almost pleadingly, all of his Captain's pride gone, "You're the _last _person I'd have ever expected to try something like this…"

Chakotay's gaze hardened challengingly. "If you've spoken to the Admiral already you know _exactly_ why I'm doing it, if you couldn't make a good guess before." He replied bitingly.

Sorrow and regret instantly revealed themselves in Harry's now age wrinkled eyes, his shoulders slumping forward, as if acknowledging his argument wasn't a particularly satisfactory one. He took a deep breath, "We've suffered…horrible losses over the years, I'm not denying that, but there are some things that just can't be changed."

"You sound like me, or how I used to." Chakotay told him with a sad wistfulness, "Maybe it wasn't just the Captain who rubbed off on you."

Harry shook his head, "No, I think everyone helped train me up at least a little." He looked up at Chakotay with moist but hopeful eyes. "Aren't you going to give this up then?"

"I _can't_…" Chakotay said with surprising force, "I've come this far, I won't give up on them and you wouldn't want me to…"

Icheb spoke up for the first time since they'd left the transporter room, "This…mission has a low probability of succeeding." He remarked with cool succinctness.

Chakotay turned to face the young, well not so young anymore, former Borg questioningly. "Did Korath load me down with a dud?"

Icheb paused, obviously reluctant to answer. Chakotay could clearly envisage the cogs of calculation turning in his complex mind; it was a trait he and Seven had definitely shared. She'd be proud of her adoptive son, standing straight as a steel rod in his red and black uniform with the three gold pips of a Commander. Yet, Chakotay still thought of the lanky, solemn but eager to please young teenager he'd met over twenty seven years ago. It unsettled him to think that that boy was now the same age, and rank, as he'd himself been when he first met him. "No, the temporal device seems to be functional as near as I can determine." Icheb finally answered slowly, "But your plan is otherwise flawed."

"How?" Chakotay asked with interest, no more inclined to beat around the bush than Icheb was.

Icheb answered with a question of his own, "How are you going to convince the Voyager crew of twenty six years ago to follow your plan? The Admiral made it clear that after a great deal of…" He sighed in disapproval, "…ill-advised research on her part, she found that the Borg transwarp conduit was the only plausible faster route back to the Alpha Quadrant. I, however, doubt that you will be able to convince Captain Janeway to take such drastic action."

Chakotay nodded in acknowledgement of his point but replied steadily, "You didn't know the old Captain Janeway like I did. She'd do anything to get the crew home that bit faster, hell, I, in all my infinite wisdom, had to haul her back from some of her crazier plans." He looked at both men seriously as they sighed, knowing this had been true of their Captain. "Even then, we'd faced the Borg before and I can help them face them again…" His chest heaved painfully, suddenly weighted down with all his own niggling doubts. "I know they'll risk it, when they some of what will happen…"

Harry gasped, and then lowered his head unhappily, but anger sparked to life in Icheb's eyes. "You cannot tell them, it would be cruel." He said sharply, staring at Chakotay in disbelief, "You would wound Seven in that way?" he questioned accusingly, "You know as well as I do the guilt she would suffer…"

Hurt and outrage exploded from Chakotay in a near shout before it softened to an anguished groan, "I've _never _blamed her for any of this and I'd never let her believe that for a second…"

"Perhaps." Icheb conceded, grief starting to smother his anger. He'd loved Seven as a mother and knew he wouldn't be the full individual he was now without her early influence. As for Freya, he'd doted on Seven's child from her birth and as she'd grown she'd been a like a little sister to him… "What about Freya?" he asked softly.

A lump rose visibly in Chakotay's throat. A tearful catch could be heard in his now hoarse voice as he answered, "She may…not exist as she did here, but here she died young and…violently. I don't want that for her. If this works, Seven and I will have children and they will be loved by both of us just as much as we loved Freya here…"

These words had a deeper effect on Harry and Icheb than any of his other, louder, exclamations and Harry felt the loyal friendship in his heart win out against the obedient Starfleet officer. "I won't stop you trying Chakotay, not now. That journey cost too much."

"Yes…" Icheb whispered before he, in an unusual attempt at a human gesture, touched Chakotay's shaking shoulder. "You realise you won't be able to come back?"

Chakotay gave his arm a fatherly squeeze. "I always knew Icheb, and it's never mattered."

* * *

><p>Seven of Nine stood in Voyager's brightly lit Aeroponics bay, uncharacteristically frozen by indecision as she apprehensively studied all of the flowers around her. Perhaps Chakotay wouldn't be expecting her to follow this custom, it wasn't as if she was in the habit of humouring human traditions. She shook her head in self-frustration, making her cortical node, which was still recovering from the removal of her emotional fail-safe the hour before, throb a little in complaint. No, it was considered well mannered to show gratitude to your host, and she certainly was grateful to Chakotay for showing her so much attention on their dates. She shivered nervously and checked her internal clock; there were still ten minutes until she was due to arrival at his quarters. Making her decision, she swept hurriedly around the rows of flowers, picking and choosing. She avoided pointedly sensual blooms such as roses and lilies for the same reason she wasn't wearing a dress, she didn't want to appear to be making presumptions about his romantic intentions, if he had any. So, she had put on a clean biosuit and now chose a mixed selection of innocuous, but still pretty and fragrant, flowers. Gripping the fine green stems gave her something to concentrate on other than her anxiety, although said concentration was almost snapping the flowers in two, and the canopy of the bouquet hid her badly shaking hands from view. Almost as an afterthought, she picked out a large daisy, but as she stared at the white petals a strange chant entered her mind. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me… She suppressed the thought ruthlessly, blushing. Where had that come from? Suddenly, her internal clock reminded her that she had only five minutes and she dropped the daisy with an agitated sigh. As she stepped forward, her legs felt weak and disorientated, her heart starting to race. Losing patience, she made her way to her console and dialled in a site to site transport, dismissing Starfleet regulations for the moment.<p>

When she materialised in Chakotay's quarters, his dark eyes, wide with shock, made her instantly fear a mistake. "Am I early?" she queried anxiously when he didn't speak.

He swallowed convulsively, fighting for composure. "No…you're right on time." He watched her avert her eyes shyly and felt an unexpected jest come to his lips, "Was there something wrong with the door?"

Seven shook her head, pink flooding her pale face and making her even more attractive. "I did not think it…discreet to be seen carrying flowers to the First Officer's quarters." She explained quietly.

Chakotay, despite his nerves, couldn't help but chuckle in agreement. "You're probably right about that." He admitted, reaching over to take the proffered flowers. He didn't want to correct that little misunderstanding, finding the idea of her researching such a thing adorably endearing. "I'll put these in some water…"

Seven felt a pleasant shock of electricity shoot up her arm as his warm hand brushed hers to take the flowers and, powered by that impulse, she tightened her own hand on his arm and pulled his face to hers, pressing a kiss to his lips. The kiss was passionate, she went further than she ever would have done if she'd taken time to think about the action, but it was Chakotay's response that brought true meaning to it. He didn't pause for a heartbeat before teasing his tongue past her lips, a sensation that made Seven gasp in surprise and pleasure before giving in entirely, helping him to deepen the kiss. Self awareness kicked in again brutally and Seven pulled back, the urge to smile suppressed by shock at her own forwardness. "I…I read that there can be a great deal of…tension leading up to the…first kiss…" She stammered as she met his smouldering dark eyes and gulped, "I wanted to attempt to…alleviate that tension…"

"That was very thoughtful of you." Chakotay murmured in a voice so low it made her spine tingle. She could now see the smile tugging at his lips in the semi darkness and was suddenly assured that the eyes burning into her were not angry but affectionate and…lustful. "What about the second kiss?"

Seven tried to dip her gaze again, a habit she had when uncertain, but she found she couldn't look away from him. "I…I would need to check my research…" He cut her off, as she had done to him previously, with a kiss. This one had a gentle confidence in it that made her want to melt into him as he kissed her even deeper than before, this time curving an arm around her waist, placing his hand on her hip bone, to pull her whole body flush with his. Her enhanced hearing could register a low moan building in his chest and she instinctively curled her fingers tightly around his uniform to prolong the embrace.

Just then, the insistent beep of their comm. badges went off in tandem. Stubbornly, they utterly ignored it, were in fact barely aware of the sound until it was joined by the Captain's voice, "Senior Officers, report to the Bridge!"

The hue of the red alert lights splashing over their faces made them acknowledge this, but if they hadn't badly needed air by this time they probably would've held out a little longer. Chakotay tilted his forehead down to touch Seven's as he muttered huskily, "Next time, we turn the comm. system off."

"Agreed." Seven murmured in the same tone, letting her head rest on his as she breathed heavily to restock her lungs."Let's go."

**A/n: PLEASE REVIEW! :D**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/n: I owe a huge thank you to my beta for this story, xXBrightsideBumblebeeXx, for taking the time out of her extremely hectic schedule to look over this chapter and give me ideas for the next one! This particular chapter was difficult for me, which is why it took me so long, but hopefully the next one should be easier. Please tell me what you think everyone! :)**

Chakotay stepped out of the turbolift onto the Bridge a second or so before Seven followed. She watched as his skin paled, his body jerking slightly as if he'd been struck when his eyes focused on the viewscreen directly in front of them. "What the hell…" He breathed, his lips barely moving as shock continued to paralyse him.

These words pulled Seven's attention away from her companion to see what exactly had transfixed him so powerfully, and she saw it instantly. Staring out from the viewscreen at the Bridge crew was a human man, wearing a uniform that, although altered cosmetically in several small aspects, was still recognisable as one worn by a Starfleet Captain. However that wasn't the truly shocking part of his appearance. Despite the changes time inevitably wrought on every face, extra lines and creases, hair losing its distinctive tint, everyone on that Bridge _knew_ him, it was Chakotay, the man they knew, who he himself knew, as their First Officer. This realisation, although seemingly impossible was compounded when he addressed Captain Janeway, his voice sharp with urgency, "Captain, you need to close that temporal rift behind me now! Don't wait!"

A collective gasp seemed to echo around the Bridge as that familiar voice, eerily unchanged, confirmed their shared, as yet unspoken, conclusion. Seven felt the younger, no, the _real_, Chakotay stiffen beside her and instinctively took his hand, finding his skin cold and clammy with shock. It took the Captain's reply, anger hiding her fear and confusion, before he lightly squeezed her hand gratefully in return as reality sunk perilously in. "What? Who are you?" The Captain asked, inhaling sharply as she tried to absorb what was happening, "I don't just take orders from…"

The older Chakotay's eyes narrowed in exasperation, his tattoo drawing down his forehead as he frowned, its distinctive blue ink even more striking when contrasted against hair turned snowy white by time. "You _know_ who I am Kathryn!" He told her impatiently, barely focusing on her as he looked down distractedly at his console, "If you don't close that rift, angry Klingons might just follow me through…"

"Klingons?" The Captain echoed weakly, staring up at the man on the viewscreen as she fought to understand, "Chakotay, I…"

"He's right Captain!" Harry Kim suddenly exclaimed from Ops, "I'm reading the signatures of several Klingon warbirds on the other side of the rift, as well as that of a Starfleet vessel…"

His voice was so filled with disbelieving awe that the Captain had to believe him, although she was still reluctant to put her crew's safety in the hands of this strange Chakotay doppelganger. "Keep scanning the rift, I want a clear idea of what's _really _happening here!" She ordered in agitation.

The Chakotay on the viewscreen frowned down at her determinedly, "Captain, as the fellow Captain I am now, I _respectfully _request…" The harsh irritation that was growing in his tone seemed to falsify the courtesy, "…that you close that rift before it causes more problems than either of us can deal with. Use a high-frequency phaser burst."

"I suggest that we follow…Captain Chakotay's recommendation Captain." Tuvok advised levelly from Tactical, his tone characteristically reflecting little of the strangeness of the situation, "The Klingons will reach the rift's event horizon and enter normal space within 15 seconds."

The Captain pursed her lips, frustration sparking within her as the feeling of being trapped in a situation entirely out with her control twisted itself around her. "Do as he says." She commanded briskly.

Chakotay felt the tension in his chest ease for a moment as he watched Voyager's concentrated blast of phaser fire collide with the rift, it's implosion a few seconds later was mesmerising, like a rainbow collapsing inward, and then the space was back to normal, the wound he'd created in it for himself healed to perfection. Soon enough though, his gaze fell back on the comm. link to Voyager, his own past. The crew had been struck silent momentarily just as he had by the rift's closure, but now he could see the Captain pacing around, trying not to look at him. It was a different matter for his younger self however, he couldn't look away. It was like staring into a warped reflection, seeing a memory gazing back at him, Seven standing loyally by his younger self's side. He remembered that night; right now they should have been in his quarters, on a date, sharing their third, forth or maybe even fifth kisses. She'd stopped him after those, he could still remember her shy reminder, even as her eyes twinkled at him joyfully, that "The dinner he'd prepared for them would be ruined if delayed for longer." His reply to that had been to steal another, not so quick kiss, before he'd led her to the table with her giggles ringing pleasantly in his ears. It hurt to realise that he'd stolen that memory, one he'd cherished and kept locked in his heart for years, it would never happen now. His past and this present were no longer one… Captain Janeway's voice interrupted his painful musings, "I've done as you asked Captain." She said, her voice stilted with unease and disapproval, "Now do you mind explaining _why _I had to do it?"

He swallowed back the regrets that had overwhelmed him as memories he was fighting to banish flashed through his mind. He took a deep breath as he tried to form an answer, something he wasn't even sure he had for himself. "It's simple Captain." He finally said quietly, "I'm here to get my family home safely."

* * *

><p>"There's absolutely no doubt about it Captain." The Doctor said in a hushed, certain, whisper and waving around the tricorder he'd used to conduct the scans for emphasis, "That man on the biobed <em>is <em>our Commander Chakotay."

The Captain looked at the hologram searchingly, "Are you sure Doctor?"

The hologram nodded rigorously, slightly perturbed that the Captain didn't immediately believe him, but he supposed that was reasonable given the circumstances. "100% positive. Apart from a twenty six year age difference, Commander and…Captain Chakotay are the same man."

"Twenty six years?" The Captain echoed incredulously, turning to her First Officer in astounded disbelief, "Then he really has travelled through time…"

"I still don't believe it Captain." Chakotay interrupted resolutely, "I'd _never_ contemplate time travel, it goes against _everything_ I believe in!" He declared passionately, shooting his older counterpart a brief, suspicious, glare. Even with such unnerving evidence right in front of him, a man who looked like his grandfather, father and himself all combined into one, he still refused to believe that he could ever risk the timeline in such a way. He'd always believed that, however painful, events had their reasons, that fate came and went, and the idea that he would decide to selfishly try to interfere with that sickened him and seemed to disrespect every loss he'd had to learn to cope with without dreaming of time travel. "It can't be Captain, there has to be something behind this…"

The Captain put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry Chakotay, I have no intention of letting my guard down with him, but we all need to deal with this rationally and figure out what's really happening."

A dry, bitter laugh echoed over from the biobed. "What's really happening Captain, is that I'm telling you the truth." The older Chakotay remarked tightly, a small, knowing frown settling on his features as he looked at his younger self. "You know I wouldn't be doing this if there wasn't any other choice." He murmured to him, his voice thick with what Chakotay recognised with a shiver as regret and steely determination.

"Time travel isn't generally considered a choice." The Captain said thoughtfully, eyebrows raised.

"Well, your future self thought differently Captain." The older Chakotay informed her with a wry quirk of his lips that didn't reach his hollow eyes. "And a greedy Klingon helpfully procured a time machine from somewhere."

The Captain's mouth dropped open, "Wait, I had something to do with…"

"At first." Chakotay answered, then shrugged as he was met with three questioning sets of eyes. "I suppose I have the most to lose in this." He admitted with a heavy sigh.

Before Janeway or Commander Chakotay could respond to that, the Doctor quickly ran his tricorder over him again. "Has that got anything to do with the abnormally high levels of cell degradation I'm reading? Only some forms of radiation would…"

The older Chakotay's expression darkened further, his eyes becoming unreadable. "I was exposed over two decades ago, it doesn't matter now Doctor." He said tersely, the subject obviously hitting a nerve before his tone lightened again, "As for whatever else is wrong with me, I'm just getting old."

"Even time travel can't postpone that indefinitely, but I'd still like an explanation…" The Captain began, but Chakotay wasn't listening, his still keen gaze had caught Seven hovering by Sickbay's door. His breath caught traitorously in his throat, it was still a shock, a wonderful shock but still a shock none the less, to be able to see, rather than only imagine, her living, breathing form. He was painfully aware that she was avoiding him, he knew her well enough to be able to tell when she was nervous even when skilfully hiding it. That hurt even more than realising his memory hadn't done her justice, she really was beautiful, and resembled their daughter even more than he'd previously believed.

"It's okay Seven, come in." The gentle words were out of his mouth before he realised what he was doing, although he noticed the protective flinch that passed over his younger self's face as Seven obligingly approached, gaze stubbornly averted.

"Thank you Captain Chakotay." She said politely, fighting a blush as she stumbled over the new rank and felt irrationally aware of his eyes on her. Quickly she handed the PADD she was holding to Captain Janeway, "I've completed my analysis of the future Delta Flyer." She reported perfunctorily, "It has a number of new forms of technology, a neural interface system for pilots, enhanced warp engines, multi-phasic torpedoes, isometric shields and tritanium armour plating."

"Can any of it be adapted for Voyager?" The Captain asked with interest. Seven didn't answer immediately, distracted by the older Chakotay's intense gaze directed only at her. He was the same man she knew, she knew that with a certainty that unsettled her, but he was also a shadow of his younger self. The muscle that filled out his tall frame had faded, his uniform was hanging loose to the point where he looked underweight, and although his facial structure was as strikingly handsome as ever despite age, it also looked strained, weariness evident in every expression. It was the look in his eyes however, that made anxiety enter her heart unwillingly, when she's first entered the room she was sure she'd seen tears form for an instant in his dark eyes before being stubbornly blinked away… "Seven?" The Captain prompted again.

Seven jerked her gaze guiltily away from the temporal traveller to focus on the Captain again. "The neural interface and warp enhancements are incompatible with Voyager's systems, but I believe the tritanium plating can be adapted as well as the torpedo technology."

"Get started on it then, we've still got the Borg to worry about." The Captain instructed her.

With a short nod and a furtive glance at the younger Chakotay Seven quickly left Sickbay and Janeway couldn't help but notice that their guest's unreadable gaze remained fixed on where the ex-Borg had stood long after she'd left.

**A/n: PLEASE REVIEW! :D**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/n: I apologise for the long wait for this chapter, I've actually been writing and editing it on and off for weeks, but I thought I'd better finish off and publish it this week before uni constrains my time. Due to those time constraints, this chapter hasn't been beta read, but xXBrightsideBumblebeeXx did write a bit of this chapter for me ages ago, so thanks! :) **

Captain Janeway was guiltily surprised at the relieved sigh that audibly escaped from her chest as Chakotay, the younger not the elder, left Sickbay within minutes of Seven's departure having managed to avoid confronting his aged doppelganger. His self-control however hadn't extended to keeping his thoughts on his development from _her_ and she couldn't help but feel glad to be rid of his hawkish presence that had cast an unspoken shadow over her careful attempts to coerce an explanation fromtheir newest, and oldest, visitor. Of course, she could understand his wariness, even his anger, it couldn't be a good feeling to have your decisions second guessed by someone, _yourself_, imbued with the gift of hindsight, but that didn't make it any easier to withstand his confused feelings being haphazardly piled onto her own.

"Captain?" She probed as she moved to stand in front of the man's biobed, trying to remain professional and ignore the prickly sensation of unease she felt using that rank, so at odds with what she knew of him. After all, she reminded herself, Voyager was still _her_ ship. "I think…" She ran a stressed hand through her hair and flashed the Doctor a grateful smile as he sensibly retreated to his office, "…we need to talk about what you're doing here in more detail."

Chakotay winced slightly despite the fact that he'd known she'd want more; she always did where Voyager was concerned. "I'll tell you what I can Captain."

The Captain's eyes narrowed when she heard his resigned tone, "Temporal Directive or not, our definitions of what you can say might be very different." She remarked, her voice weighed by warning.

Chakotay sighed heavily as he slid off the biobed and onto the floor. "I know." He admitted quietly before shooting her a knowing look, "Report to your Ready Room I presume?"

The Captain coloured in annoyance, surely she wasn't that predictable? "That's fine with me." She eventually answered coolly, turning on her and indicating for him to follow which he did.

They fell into step pretty quickly as they made their way to the Ready Room. Old habits die hard, Chakotay mused silently as he realised that his calm strides followed behind her empowered, agitated steps. He felt like he was inhabiting a memory, an ambiguous one that could turn tragic or happy. He'd need to be careful to retain his own sense of perspective here. "So, you want more of an explanation?" he asked quietly as they stepped onto the Bridge, garnering a host of odd looks from the present shift on duty there as they did so.

"Of course I do!" she hissed through clenched teeth, "Just saying that you're here to help isn't enough!" She froze as she reached the doors to her Ready Room, realising how that sounded. "I mean, I know that you wouldn't do anything other than help us…" She clarified in exasperation as she strode headlong into the room, letting her body lean to her reliable desk as the doors slid shut behind Chakotay, "But I also can't base my decisions on a future I know nothing about!"

Chakotay looked around the familiar space as he searched for an answer. He toyed with the idea of telling her about how this room looked as a museum exhibit, with a postcard view of San Francisco Bay from its window rather than the unmapped stars of the Delta Quadrant, but decided it would be cruel to them both to play such games. "I know you want specifics Captain, you're ready to ignore the Temporal Prime Directive for that, but you'll just need to settle for knowing that if I thought it would do you any good to know why I'm here I'd tell you."

The Captain eyed him doubtfully, biting her lip. "But would you? What drove _you_ to this of all people, let alone _my _future self…"

Chakotay cursed his lack of caution in Sickbay, his tongue had been loosened by the glow of initial, delirious, success and now he was getting it thrown back in his face. "Kathryn, for your own sake just focus on what I'm saying now. It doesn't really matter how I got to this point." He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment as he was overwhelmed with reasons why it did matter to him, more than anything. "I'm offering you a route home, what else have you or anyone else wanted over the past seven years? Yes, the future will change but, believe me, that's what I want."

Janeway almost shrank back from him, disturbed by how much force he put in the words. Maybe he was right and the future that had driven him to this was somewhere she didn't want to acknowledge let alone hear of. "You have a plan?" She questioned, now feeling strangely reluctant to engage with him despite the tantalizing prospect he seemed determined to offer.

Chakotay smiled in relief, bounding his way over to the nearest computer console. "Yes. I'll explain that in however much detail you need…"

"No." Janeway breathed faintly, pulling him back from the console, "Not yet, not now." Seeing frustration, boiling into anger, burn across his still handsome face, she tried to explain. "I need time to think Chakotay. I need to consider all of the ramifications of what you're suggesting, and not just the good ones."

Chakotay sighed as he caught the imploring, and yet implacable, expression in her eyes. He should have known she wouldn't let go of her scruples so easily. In the intervening, hard years he'd known between his time and this one, he'd almost forgotten them after the Admiral he knew had bitterly abandoned her resolution for Voyager to get home with an unblemished Starfleet stamp of approval. "Alright Captain." He agreed as neutrally as he could, "I understand."

The Captain let herself breathe again but still bowed her head to escape his intense gaze, which, when he spoke of his mission here, blazed with the heat of an enraged wounded animal, ready to lash out at those who'd hurt him. "Thank you."

* * *

><p>Chakotay sat at a table in the Mess Hall nursing a cup of rapidly cooling coffee, his brows furrowed with a mixture of thought and fatigue. Although he had been slightly irritated by the crew's initial mistrust towards him, he could understand it; he remembered the days of anything and everyone being a threat until proven otherwise all too well. Everybody looked so much younger, so fresh-faced in comparison to their future counterparts, and for the first time he was able to see Voyager's existence as an outsider. The air on the ship was tense, and he felt shocked to realise that it was something he remembered; the tight ball in his stomach that had gradually faded after each passing year back on Earth was returning, and the worry it brought him was engraved on the faces of everybody he saw. He realised then, that everybody had had something to cling on to during their years here, something that made this tension somewhat bearable. Harry Kim and his endless optimism, a beacon of light in this vast, limitless space, Tom Paris and playing the clown; there had been B'Elanna with her anger, and Tuvok with meditation and being able to see things rationally at all times. He had never understood it before, but now, just when he most needed her to let go, he realised why Kathryn had clung to Starfleet regulations so fiercely; in a world of uncertainty they had been her ground, her reassurance that she was doing something right because despite it all, she had stuck by the rules, and that had to count for something. He had always respected her, as both his Captain and the person who had given him and his crew a second chance, but where he had once felt frustration at her refusal to relinquish her devotion to Starfleet morals and guides he felt something else, sympathy. The Admiral Janeway of his future had, after Voyager's return, campaigned endlessly for a newer, updated version of regulations for special cases such as Voyager's, ones which allowed for flexible morality, ones that placed the top priorities at getting the crew home as quickly and safely as possible rather than being obligated to carry out mercy missions for the 'greater good'. She had, however, changed her mind on the one thing she had always been adamant about not destroying: the Temporal Prime Directive. She'd swerved her viewpoint so wholly that it had shocked him, and her reasoning behind it, though both valid and touching, was something he knew her younger self would have just accepted as being par for the course. He felt vindicated in his decision to come here more so than he had previously because he knew, that had she come here instead of him, as she had originally intended, it would have rocked the very foundations of all that had been built in the seven years the crew had spent together; he had already let the cat out of the bag by saying that she'd had something to do with him being there, but if they knew to what extent... It just didn't bear thinking about.<p>

And then there was himself. Chakotay knew that he had changed over the years, the marriage, child and then having them ripped away from him in the cruellest way possible had seen to that, but he had been shocked at his younger self's vehement denial that any of this was happening. The proclamation that it went against 'everything he believed in' he felt, had been a little extreme. He'd always hated the phrase 'You'll understand it all when you're older', but it seemed strangely appropriate now. Of course, he reminded himself, he was here to make things easier for everyone, and lead them to a future where time travel would not be an option they'd need to consider in order to be happy. That thought was all the justification he needed and hopefully his younger self would recognise that one day without having to go through what he had.

He pushed the coffee cup away distractedly as his eye found the source, in his timeline, of his brightest happiness and most painful sorrow. He released a regretful sigh as she stalked in, attention fixed not on him but the replicator that was her goal. Even for him her gaze was unreadable, so he hated to think of how inaccessible she must look to everyone else. Though he hadn't intended them to, the years had glossed his view of Seven, both physically and otherwise. Now that he was here, he could see that he had romanticised her features in his brain; her jaw was more hard set than he remembered and her stance so strict. She was still beautiful, there was no doubting that fact, and he rationalised that the Seven he knew and remembered was his wife, the mother of his child, and the woman he had spoken to not hours ago was neither yet. Though he would never be so arrogant as to assume that he had been the only good thing in her life, that other factors didn't make her happy, he did know that with the additions of himself and Freya to her life, Seven had become more relaxed and her smile given more freely. Now that the irrational shock of seeing her again had passed, he remembered that the Seven he was here for was the Seven who was his wife, mother to his baby, and by doing this he was giving her the chance to be both of those for longer.

"Captain Chakotay?" The sound of Tom's voice, the tone still friendly if not completely at ease, made Chakotay jump and wrench his eyes guiltily away from Seven.

"It's just Chakotay like always Tom." He replied kindly, "At least when the Commander isn't here to cause confusion." He laughed without humour as he thought of the trouble his counterpart's unyielding stance could cause him and unthinkingly downed the cold, bitter dregs from the bottom of his cup.

Tom's laugh was almost as strained, "Yeah, I guess." He agreed quickly before questioningly raising an eyebrow at the cup, "I always had you down as more of a tea man Chakotay."

Chakotay allowed himself a wry, tired smile as he considered for an instant telling Tom the truth. Firstly fatherhood, nothing could bring on a necessary caffeine habit quicker than a newborn baby, then grieving insomnia, had made him turn to the coffee pot more often, as well as, he was ashamed to say, the whisky bottle when Freya was no longer there to restrain the urge. "Things change." He finally answered hollowly.

Tom sensed the reply's regretful note and tried to lighten the mood a little. "I suppose I'll be the same when the baby finally decides to make an appearance." He responded with a grin.

Chakotay was surprised that he was able to return the smile with genuine warmth, if only he could tell Tom how proud he would be of Miral, in any timeline. "Definitely."

Tom's smile widened in anticipation, almost as if he could read the line of Chakotay's thoughts, but quickly became serious again. "What are you doing in here? I would've thought people who make the effort to time travel would have better things to do than sit in the Mess Hall."

Chakotay bit back a sigh, remembering what he'd realised about the Captain's attitude with him. "I'm…waiting." He answered carefully.

Suddenly Captain Janeway's voice filtered through the comm. system and buzz of conversation in the Mess Hall slowed to a respectful hum. "Can all senior officers and Captain Chakotay please report to Astrometrics."

"Seems like your wait is over." Tom commented drily as the other man sprang up eagerly but soon followed him out of the Mess Hall just as hurriedly.

* * *

><p>"Here is part of transwarp conduit shown on the viewscreen as you requested Captain." Seven said as all of the senior officers filed into Astrometrics, their eyes immediately filling with horrified awe at the sight of the ever expanding Borg web.<p>

"Part of it?" B'Elanna echoed tersely.

"Yes." Seven answered resignedly, "The full conduit would need four of these viewscreens to be shown in full."

A collective sharp intake of breath echoed around the room at this information but Seven found her attention drawn to Captain Chakotay, who was solely unaffected. It took Captain Janeway's serious question to stop her dwelling on his reaction, "You called us here Seven because you saw in increase of activity in the conduit?"

"Yes Captain, energy readings indicate that the number of Borg vessels travelling through the conduit has increased by 30% since our arrival."

The Captain paled, "Could that mean that they know we're here?" She asked anxiously.

"No." Captain Chakotay broke in before Seven could reply, "They haven't seen us, they're preparing to assimilate a new sector." When he saw everyone stare at him, he explained with a sigh, "A few months from now, we found several systems the Borg had raided for drones and supplies and Seven related it back to this conduit." He lowered his gaze as he saw Seven blanch with guilt she shouldn't, but always would, feel.

The Captain clenched her jaw and spun away from the viewscreen in repulsion. "Then we're going to get out of here right now…"

"No!" Captain Chakotay snapped, forgetting his reserve. "That conduit is your route home!"

"What do you mean?" Seven managed to choke out as the Captain turned red with anger and everyone else fell into a mortified disbelief. "Chakotay, that's impossible…"

Commander Chakotay grimaced as Seven addressed his older self, a flash of irrational fear and jealousy flashing through him. "Of course it is…" He began accusingly.

Captain Chakotay nearly growled in frustration, feeling the prospect of a new future begin to slip through his fingers. "Look, I know the Borg are daunting, but I'm giving you a thirty year head start, we can get past them." When he saw that they looked doubtful, something broke inside him as the image of Freya's mauled, half-assimilated body burned at the back of his mind, "For God's sake, you _can't _let them ruin this, not this…"

Seven gripped the edge of the console as she felt the pain and hatred radiating from Chakotay's eyes like a slap in the face. "Explain your plan." She demanded shakily, longing for an explanation for the feelings she could sense from him.

Chakotay gave a start, dragged back out of the bottomless pit that held his darkest memories by Seven's blunt demand. "As I said, I've given you the technology to thwart the Borg. You might not believe me…" He intended the words to address everyone but found himself staring solely at Seven, "…but we did win a lot of battles with the Queen and her Collective over the years, or else we never would've reached the Alpha Quadrant."

"You say we reach the Alpha Quadrant in your timeline, defeating the Borg in the process, yet you still want to risk this now to get us there earlier." Seven said quietly, her voice hard with disbelief.

Chakotay felt his fists curl in frustration, upset by the fact that it was _Seven_ of all people who was resisting him, the person he was most desperate to save. "Yes, I am willing to take the risk and I'm not ashamed of that…" He started to retort.

Janeway decided now was the time to intervene and put an understanding hand on Seven's shoulder while meeting Chakotay's eyes emphatically, "He definitely has his reasons Seven, let's leave it at that."

Seven released a quavering breath, confused by her own feelings. "Yes Captain." She agreed in a regretful murmur.

B'Elanna now spoke up from where she'd been carefully studying the map of the conduit and Seven's data about it. "Chakotay, I understand that your technology would give us a chance, but it would still be a slim one if we couldn't distract the Collective somehow, there are just too many vessels."

Chakotay gave his old friend a warm smile, grateful for her benefit of the doubt. "Oh undoubtedly, but I'll deal with the Queen when the time comes, don't worry."

He sounded so certain that everyone in Astrometrics fell silent for a moment before the Captain took charge again. "I look forward to hearing about how you intend to do _that_." She told Chakotay pointedly, eyebrows arching.

"It's nothing you haven't done before Kathryn." Chakotay replied coolly, his lips twisting bitterly for a split second.

Janeway nodded slowly and turned to address the others. "I want this situation assessed, everything that you can get about that conduit I want to know as soon as possible. Dismissed." She inclined her head at the older Chakotay to get him to follow her as she left, indicating to Seven to stay at her post as she did so.

Seven let herself sag against the console as she watching everyone troop out, her eyes fixed on Captain Chakotay's retreating back. As the doors closed she allowed a worried sigh to escape her strangely tight chest. "What's wrong?" Chakotay's soft, concerned voice near her made her jump, but she relaxed when she realised Commander Chakotay had remained behind.

She tried to fix an impassive expression on her face as he watched her but found that it wouldn't come. "I believe I am experiencing what humans would define as a "bad feeling". She finally admitted as he came to her side.

"I can't say I blame you, I've been feeling like that since _he_ got here." Chakotay replied with a heavy sigh, making Seven touch his arm in concern."I'm alright really." He assured her a little too quickly, "But what about you? If you truly don't believe his technology would help then tell the Captain, she'd scrap the whole idea if you were against it."

"His plan would have a good chance of working, if we do it properly." Seven told him seriously, glancing back at the viewscreen for a moment before her gaze shifted to the floor and she swallowed hard, "The way he spoke of the Borg…unsettled me." She forced out, "There's hatred there, hatred you don't feel now. What happened to…"

"Seven…" Chakotay interrupted, grasping her shoulders, "We can't do anything about what he's experienced and we don't know what it was. He was…harsh about the Borg but I don't see why you're so upset about that…"

"I _am_ Borg!" Seven snapped brokenly.

Chakotay gripped her until the pressure of his fingers hurt. "_No_, you're _not_." He told her forcefully, pulling her close, "Listen to me…" He murmured into her hair, "I _know_ that whatever happens between him and the Borg has _nothing _to do with you Seven and I don't want you to start thinking that way." He pressed his lips fervently to her forehead, "I could _never_ hate you now and I never did before either, understood?"

Seven nodded into his shoulder, wrapping her arms tightly around his broad back. "He's in so much pain." She whispered thickly, surprised to feel her irises filming over with tears. "It hurt me to see you like that…"

Chakotay responded by tilting her chin up with his hand and kissing her gently on the mouth, hugging her flush against him as he did so to comfort himself as well as her.

**A/n: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! :D It's such a relief to get this chapter up, it's been nagging at me for about two months!**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/n: This update is proof of my promise that I will update every one of my fics eventually. Be that as it may, this chapter wouldn't have been finished now without the amazing and inspiring input of my co-author/beta for this story, xXSilentCrescendoXx (formerly xXTheGothicBumblebeeXx). She wrote the whole first section, right up to the beginning of the conversation, and basically resurrected my muse for this story, so thanks to her once again! :) **

Seven cast an anxious eye around the sparsely decorated set of quarters that had been assigned to Captain Chakotay. Her uneasiness was partly due to the fact that the room had barely been entered since the death of its former occupant, Assistant Chief Engineer Joe Carey; the only people she knew who had come in here since the Lieutenant had met his untimely death had been Captain Janeway, Lieutenant Torres, and now the elder Chakotay. The walls that had once housed such a well-respected man, one who had had a young family no less, were far from welcoming; she almost felt as if she were intruding twice as much as she would have done had the elder Chakotay been assigned to any other spare room. She'd never been particularly comfortable around death, though she always took great pains to mask her discontent, hiding beneath a veneer of neutrality; a trait that she often suspected the crew perceived as her not caring, as her seeing herself as above them. The other thing attributing to her discomfort was what she was there to do.

She was certainly not unfamiliar with the term 'espionage'; she had been assigned that task numerous times as a part of the Collective. Even aboard Voyager she had done her fair share of listening in, only stopping after an extremely irate B'Elanna Torres had called her out on it. She'd had a more profound respect for other people's privacy after that encounter, but there was something about the newcomer onboard that didn't sit quite right with her. She had had a strange feeling about Chakotay's aged doppelganger since the moment she'd encountered him in Sickbay, and it was something far more unsettling than the trepidation she usually fought with when the crew made contact with any other life in the Delta Quadrant. His peculiar behaviour had been the thing that had sparked her initial apprehension: the way he had stared at her in Sickbay, both awestruck and fearful, had startled her, but then, she was used to that face, albeit a much younger version, looking at her with a mixture of respect and a subtle adoration. Then there had been their confrontation in Astrometrics. Unusually for her, the emotions that had played across his face, frustration, grief, and most disturbingly, hatred, had burned a clearer memory in her mind than the actual terse words they had exchanged. As much as she had appreciated the younger Chakotay's assurances that those feelings could never be directed at her, she had been struggling all day since to take that soothing, and probably wistful on his part, promise to heart. It was the decision to bring that internal conflict to a conclusion, a reassuring one or not, which had brought her here.

She stepped further forward into the room, using quiet, calculated steps. Nothing seemed to be out of place, there wasn't even a single crease on the duvet covering the twin bed. No, bar a brown leather wallet on the bedside table, you could not even tell that a person was staying there. Seven eyed the wallet guiltily, knowing that she would have to take a look in order to satisfy her curiosity. This man was not the Chakotay she knew, she rationalised, this was an older, more hostile version, one that was completely happy to snap at her and go out of his way to make her feel uncomfortable. She was not sure why she felt as though something in the wallet could explain it, but she had come to learn that she should learn to trust her 'gut instinct'; it had rarely let her down before.

The exterior of the wallet was worn, cracked, and the various identifications and mementos inside made no sense to her. She felt a great disappointment, she'd hoped for more than this; a clue would have been nice, some sort of sign that she'd done something to deserve all the ambivalence and malice the elder Chakotay was sending her way rather than the possibility of him just changing his mind about her and their romance. Seven felt her chest muscles constrict, the idea did not appeal. She had taken the first steps into romantic involvement with this man; the thought of it not working out terrified her.

She began to place the items back into the wallet, thanking her eidetic memory for the ability to be able to put it back into order; it would not do to arouse suspicion in Chakotay; she'd hate for either one of them to think she had no issues with snooping around their personal effects, and she wasn't sure she had the words in her vocabulary to explain the emotional battle she'd fought with herself to even enter the room. She got to the last item, some piece of paper tainted with the fragrance of rosewater, and placed it into the back of the wallet. She noticed a slightly frayed edge sticking out, and its texture did not match any of the things she'd inspected before. Curious, she pulled it out, and traced a pattern on the back. It was obviously a photograph, and she debated whether or not it would be worth it to satisfy her curiosity if she found a picture of another woman on the other side. Another, perhaps prettier, untainted woman. Would it, she asked herself, be worth the heartbreak?

Carefully, she moved herself into a sitting position atop the bed, crossing her legs and putting the wallet beside her. The photograph was still in her hands, and she toyed with the filmy texture on the other side. Eventually curiosity got the better of her and she turned the paper over before she could change her mind and run away from the situation.

A woman.

Just like she had feared, a woman was there and Chakotay had his arm around her. Contrary to her fears, Seven found herself smiling, because despite never having seen that face before, she knew immediately who it belonged to. The resemblance was, in a word, uncanny. Hair just slightly darker than her own, hung to just above her elbows, gently curled and bouncy. The face was structurally similar to her own, though the eyes through which this girl saw the world, despite being that familiar shade of blue, shone with a light as she smiled which, she knew, along with the full, graceful lips could have only been bestowed on her by Chakotay. She recognised a few people in the background; there was the unmistakable grin of Tom Paris, and the equally exuberant Harry Kim. She briefly looked over a beautiful woman who she assumed was an adult Naomi Wildman, before returning her gaze to her own daughter, a person she'd never known but already had such strong, confused, feelings for.

She heard the noise of someone clearing their throat and wondered when they'd come in; she had not heard the beep or the sound of the doors opening, so transfixed had she been by the photograph. She looked up, already knowing who it was, but made no move to get off the bed. Any other time she would have made a rush to justify her reason for being there, but the look on the elder Chakotay's face conveyed to her that there was no need.

That he already knew.

"It's a good photo," he began, moving closer towards her, yet she still did not move. "I think I'd forget what she looked like if I didn't have it with me to remind myself." Seven felt worry shot through her, her brows creasing tighter together as new anxiety piled atop the confusion and apprehension she was already experiencing, did Chakotay develop memory issues? It seemed highly unlikely to her that anybody could forget such a charming face, especially as it belonged to his own child.

"It is a good photo," Seven agreed, casting her eyes back to their daughter. She was holding a slice of cake on a paper party plate, and balanced precariously on the edge was one of those weird spoon-fork combination things she'd heard Lieutenant Paris refer to as a 'spork'. She beamed up at her father, who himself wore a weary smile. Seven saw the tension in his shoulders and wondered if the grin was for his daughter or the camera. Looking up, Seven stared the elder Chakotay in the eyes and opened her mouth.

"Freya." he stated, both correctly pre-empting her question and answering it. "Her name was Freya."

"Freya." Seven repeated, the syllables rolling sweetly out of her mouth even as her voice was contained to a strained whisper. She glanced down at the photograph, as if for confirmation, and as her gaze flickered from her daughter, now definitively real in her mind as well as her heart, to the still image of Chakotay frozen in time, the full meaning of his short answer slammed into her. She was dimly aware of a gasping sound around her as she felt the oxygen being forced from her constricted chest, but kept her eyes fixed on the photograph as if it were an anchor to cling to in this storm she'd walked into. Her vision blurred and she was only able to clear it when she realised with a stab of panic and guilt that she was almost crushing the picture in her clenched hand. Only after she'd gently laid it out on her knee and tenderly smoothed out the crumples encroaching on the fragile paper did she dare to face its owner again. "She is the reason for your presence here." She didn't feel the need to phrase her conclusion as a question; in her mind he'd already confirmed it with his actions.

"Yes, the final reason." Chakotay answered, and although a heavy and bitter sigh followed the words as an echo, the hostile edge Seven had so feared had left his voice entirely, with only painful resignation clinging onto the honest, quiet words. Seven assumed he expected her to ask more, probe for more detail, but really, she needed no more. The twin spectres of death and grief hovered around this empty room, Lieutenant Carey was not alone in watching them silently. Freya was going to die, was already dead, and her mother felt that the _how _of such an event would never be truly relevant to her. So she let the detail hang between them, unasked for and thus unspoken, her eyes merely drifting back to the photograph. The silence was broken by the sound of Chakotay's careful steps towards her, but she still jumped slightly when she heard the creak of the bedsprings, watching as his legs swung off the floor to mirror her crossed legged position and then sensed his head tilting to join hers over the photograph. "That was her 21st birthday." He murmured, the warmth of remembered laughter tingeing his voice as he pointed to the flowing red dress Freya was wearing, "I managed to coax her out of her new Ensign's uniform for the day…" His eyes, which Seven couldn't help but study as he recalled their lost daughter, darkened visibly as he mentioned the Starfleet rank, and Seven, in a gesture of silent empathy even as different scenarios raged through her mind relentlessly, gently pressed the photograph into his hand. His skin felt cold to the touch, making worry again surge through Seven unbidden, but he didn't seem to notice her reaction, instead gazing down at the picture intently, a distant smile passing over his face as he rubbed the image over and over again with his thumb. "I think Icheb took this picture, he had good aim with a camera, but he could hardly ever be coaxed in front of one, just like you…" He trailed off as he felt Seven stiffen beside him, despite the strangeness of the situation their natural ease with each had shown itself for a few moments before fading away again now. As she moved to a more strict position, her beautiful face taut with conflicted emotion, placing her feet neatly on the floor as if preparing to rise. He found himself looking at anything but her, studying the soulless interior of these quarters. "I wish they'd given me any other room than Joe Carey's." He muttered.

Seven exhaled slightly as she noted wryly that she'd had almost exactly the same thought upon entering. "I found it unsettling also…" She admitted slowly, "…particularly now." She stood up, her legs itching to make for the door but she surprised herself by turning sharply around to face him, shoulders hunching with dread as she stared down at his seated form. "I presume that I am dead also?" As blunt as the statement was, and much more detached than any comment she'd made regarding Freya's life, she continued on without allowing him to answer, "I would not just assume that we'd necessarily remained…involved…" Her voice was suddenly in a rush, stumbling in embarrassment, but she forced herself to persevere anyway, "…but I know that if I were able to help you prevent our child from dying, even by time travel, I would…"

"I know that Seven." Chakotay interrupted thickly, reaching forward to grip her badly shaking arm. Her dismissal of the consequences for her own death had shocked even him and sent him reeling, but he saw that he had to be honest now. He wanted to say something more meaningful, but somehow his affirmation became as blunt as her question. "Yes, you died."

Seven blanched, but as she looked down at his hand around her elbow any vestige of her neutral front concerning death began to crumble for an entirely different reason. "I…I hurt you, caused you grief…" She choked out, "That is why you resent me now…"

Chakotay's hand moved swiftly down from her elbow to grasp her hand. "It hurt to _lose _you because I love you. That could never be your fault." He told her in a whisper, unconsciously rubbing the back of her hand in circles to calm her and himself as he sighed brokenly, "As for the resentment, that's directed at this whole situation, that we even have to go through this…"

Seven closed her eyes for a moment as she tried to hold back the threatening tears and process what he'd said. It struck her that he'd used 'love' in the present tense, and somehow that made her guilt intensify rather than abate. "Why now Chakotay? Freya won't exist as she was for you, even if I am able to have children. Why didn't you go back to save her?" she asked in anguish.

The agonised grimace that instantly scarred his face made her regret the emotional outburst but he answered her immediately, if painfully. It was as if he'd memorised his rationale. "Admiral Janeway looked into time travel before me and concluded that this point in Voyager's journey, the transwarp conduit was the only opportunity to get the whole crew home alive immediately as it stands. I resisted the idea when Freya was alive, but when she was gone I realised how much it could solve. I loved her but I wasn't happy, she was the one thing that kept me going and no child should have to be that for a parent. Doesn't she, or any of our children, deserve to have you as a mother as much as I have as to have you as a wife Seven?" he questioned passionately, "This was the only way I could save both of you, Tuvok and more others than you know…"

Seven drew back from him, the red rims of her eyes standing out vividly against the ghostly white hue of the rest of her face. "I understand." She whispered as her hands fell to her sides, suddenly she was eerily still. "I apologise for the intrusion."

Chakotay knew she was withdrawing into herself and told her truthfully, "I hid all this to protect you Seven…and my younger self and the others too. If this works, you'll never have to know this pain. I didn't want you to have to live it through me."

Seven nodded, managing to reach out and touch his face for a split second in acknowledgement before hastily twisting away. As she reached the doorway however, she found that her body refused to go any further until her last nagging suspicion was voiced. "It…" Only now did a sob manage to escape her iron will to hold herself together, "It was the Borg who took Freya wasn't it?" Chakotay's sharp intake of breath was the only answer she needed. "Your younger self…he hates the Collective for what happened to me in the past, but you…you hate them for what they did to both Freya and I." She explained haltingly without turning around to face him again.

Chakotay was still amazed, even while knowing her as intimately he did, by Seven's sudden bursts of insight, but this was one he wished she hadn't had. "Yes." He answered reluctantly, pushing the word past the lump in his throat, "She wasn't…assimilated. She was spared that sweetheart."

Seven's blonde head bowed into a weak nod, but in the end doing more was beyond her as she finally gave in to the sobs wracking her body. The devastated sound of weeping became freer as Chakotay silently walked up behind her and wrapped her in his arms.

**A/n: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! :D**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/n: I wouldn't blame any of you lovely readers for having to re-read this whole story before reading this long overdue new chapter, I had to myself before writing this. I do not own Star Trek: Voyager. **

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><p>"You wanted to see me Captain?" Janeway looked up from her desk's console at the sound of Chakotay's voice, feeling her heart constrict in shock and sympathy as she saw the change in him. Just in the past couple of hours, the same shadows that had darkened the face of his aged doppelganger, revealing more than the passage of years, had begun to creep up on him and settle in the purple crescents of exhaustion hanging under his eyes, the deepening tension lines at his mouth. Even his rich voice had taken on some of discordant notes of disillusionment and anger that dominated the elder's voice. Somehow seeing this…domino effect on her friend was even more disturbing than interacting with 'Captain' Chakotay, it showed so clearly that they <em>were <em>the same man… And just yesterday his unusually upbeat mood, his readiness to smile even during the monotony of uneventful Bridge shifts, had piqued her curiosity. That feel like a lifetime ago, and what she'd give right now for a quiet, uncomplicated day! Chakotay's dulled eyes narrowed as he caught her own wide eyed gaze, "Unless it wasn't _me _you wanted to see?"

He did, to his credit, try to smile, but there was enough defensiveness in the tone that the question just couldn't come off as teasing. "Of course it is." Janeway replied quickly, flashing a weak smile of her own, "In this timeline, you're still my First Officer, that opportunity hasn't presented itself yet."

"If your fellow Captain has his way, then our opportunities in the Delta Quadrant might just be at an end." Chakotay remarked, his taut face unreadable.

Janeway sighed heavily and slumped back in her chair, drumming her fingers on its arms. "Maybe." She agreed quietly, "But I'm not counting on it yet."

"Yet?" Chakotay questioned, finally moving from where he'd been standing to attention in front of her, rooted to the spot, to instead perch warily on the chair on the other side of her desk; uncharacteristically leaning over the desk to penetrate their well-established, comfortable boundaries of personal space. "You're considering his plan?"

He carefully controlled his judgement, internalised it even, but Janeway knew him well enough, had been on the opposing side of his reserved pragmatism when she was determined to be inventive, to hear it loud and clear. "How can I not consider it Chakotay?" she asked pointedly, casting her expressive hands upward in appeal, "Tritanium armour plating, isometric shielding, multi-phasic torpedoes, and a direct route to the Alpha Quadrant…"

"A direct route through a Borg transwarp conduit." Chakotay reminded her grimly.

Janeway closed her eyes briefly, "There's the rub, and a big one at that." She conceded, running a weary hand over her face before she regarded him again with an intent gaze. "But nothing's ever easy, we've never gotten anything without risk."

"No, we haven't." Chakotay murmured, thinking of Seven as a case in point. The unconventional and violent way she'd ended up here, the risk they were each taking in opening their hearts, toughened as they were with scar tissue… Did it even matter anymore? Now that his future self has interrupted things so dramatically?

"It's a…convincing plan, a bold one." Janeway continued cautiously.

Chakotay replied to that with a tiny smirk, "One with your fingerprints all over it."

She stared at him like a deer in headlights for a moment, then laughed brokenly, "He did practically admit I instigated all this." She remembered ruefully. She stared down at the PADD, "I can almost believe that."

Chakotay took a deep breath, his lips curling uneasily. "But it was _me _who went through with that plan."

"And you've never done that before?" Janeway questioned, eyebrows raised, but quickly became serious again, "I don't know how I'd be feeling if it was _my _future self who had come back here, but I know it would be confusing…" She began tentatively.

"You have no idea." Chakotay cut her off sharply, eyes flashing, but then reined himself in again. "I just don't know what would possess me to make such a decision, pursue such a crazy plan of action!" he exclaimed in frustration, but his voice soon grew small with fear. Though revealing even a fraction of that fear to Kathryn made him shudder, he was helplessly bleeding the emotion. "You know I've had things happen in my life…many things, that I'd want to change, but I've never considered it. It's my past, a past that's passed by, unreachable, and it's made me who I am. I've always accepted that." His voice shook, the conviction leaving his tone, "What could've possibly happened to make me change so much? To make me disown those beliefs and tenets?"

Janeway flinched at the bitter, helpless, anxiety in his tone. "I honestly don't know." She admitted softly, "But Chakotay, temporal directive or not, I think I'll need to ask those questions if we're even to really consider this plan, or any like it."

Of course you will, Chakotay thought resentfully as he gave another heavy sigh and stood up abruptly. "Well, I don't know if I want to know the answers Kathryn." He told her resignedly, knocking his chair up against her desk as he left her to her prerogative of decision making and walked back out onto the Bridge.

Janeway sadly watched him leave, just as she watched his older self leave after passionately explaining their route home. Her eyes slowly refocused on the image on her console, of the Borg transwarp conduit, the monstrosity that eclipsed all this temporal hypothesis and self-analysis. Could she, in good conscience, exploit it to get home, whatever Captain Chakotay thought with the benefit of hindsight that she couldn't share?

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><p>Chakotay found that he couldn't stay on the Bridge any more than he could stay true to his self-denying statement to the Captain. He <em>didn't <em>want to know the answers, but the more deep-seated that precognition of doom became, the stronger his need to know for sure became, drawing him towards himself, the mirror image that reflected so much in himself that he'd never wanted to see. Hadn't he conquered the self-destructive martyr, the emotional hermit, that he'd been during many of his dark days in the Maquis? He didn't want to regress back to that, hated the idea that it was a possibility just as he was the happiest he'd been in years. What right did he have to destabilise everything? To bend the timeline to his will? Was he really that weak and conceited? Perhaps he did have his own best interests, and Voyager's, at heart, but wasn't the road to hell paved with good intentions?

In this distracted frame of mind, his anger building with every new thought, his feet found their way to the door of Joe Carey's old quarters. Whose idea had it been to put him up in here? Maybe his, to intensify the emotional blackmail. To remind the crew that if they followed his ordained plan then they wouldn't need to endure any further losses of good people like Joe.

He didn't bother ringing the bell, in a twisted way this was his room as much as his after all, but he regretted his hot-headed blindness as he tried to absorb what confronted him inside. He'd seen Seven in too many horrible, unimaginable if he hadn't witnessed them, situations; sometimes, he remembered guiltily, without as much pity and empathy as she should've inspired, but he was making up for that now as he recalled them. Those first lost, inky black, emotionally violent days in the Brig, the day she'd been drawn to the site of her assimilation, the Borg Queen's blackmail, torture on board the Equinox, the death of the assimilated baby she'd rescued, having death's scythe hanging over her herself… He'd seen parts of those traumas and more, but he'd never seen her cry before. She was crying now. Weeping brokenly, hopelessly, in his counterpart's arms. The counterpart whose gentle hold around her didn't waver even as their two sets of identical eyes met over the bowed golden head of the woman both of them loved.

"Seven…" Captain Chakotay murmured to her softly in warning, though oddly the competing feelings of relief and regret both reflected on his face as he accepted his younger self's presence.

Seven heaved a haggard breath of air, her reddened eyes, which had been squeezed shut against his shoulder in a useless attempt to impede the flow of tears, opening blearily to gaze up into his face. "I'm sorry…" She gulped convulsively, though she found the instinctive act did nothing to ease her speech, let alone lighten this new, complex but visceral, burden of grief, "…so sorry…"

"It's not your fault Seven." Seven tried to draw comfort from the words, then gave a start as she realised that Chakotay's lips hadn't moved. She turned at once, her heart in her throat as she saw Chakotay, the one who belonged here, standing in the doorway. The stricken confusion in his face made her heart splinter further, if that were possible now. It was as if she'd been thrown to the bottom of a lake; she couldn't breathe, couldn't hear, in that moment. Looking at Chakotay now was like staring up through the distortion of water, he shouldn't look like that. Just hours before he'd been smiling at her, his lips wet with her kisses, gaze open and warm, affectionate and hopeful. How could things have altered so much in such a short time? She still had the photograph in her hand, couldn't let it go even as it seemed to burn…

Chakotay swallowed as he saw her huge, glassy eyes fixate on him without seeing, tears sliding silently down her ashen cheeks. The irrational anger that had flared up at her when he'd seen her with him, with himself, died at once and he found that he could hardly summon it up for their harbinger of misfortune. "What's going on?" he whispered hoarsely, pleading, "What are you doing here?"

Captain Chakotay's eyes flickered between him and Seven, who remained motionless in his hold. "I'm here for us." He answered simply.

"Us?" Chakotay echoed incredulously, "Really? You're not here for yourself? You may believe you lost something you couldn't live without in 26 years, but for today, I had everything I needed, and you…"

Seven pulled herself together, Chakotay's crumbling façade tumbling through her haze. "Chakotay." She murmured, her tone was so eerily calm, even soothing, that she captured his fractured attention, his eyes pleading with her. She left the other Chakotay at once and stood in front of him, "Look at me." She requested thickly as he looked past her to the other, taking his hand with her reassuringly cool Borg one as he obeyed her. There was only one thing she could do, even as she felt the future bearing down on her. Gingerly, she pressed the photograph into his other hand.

Chakotay glanced down at the photograph, a basic paper copy rather than a holo-image, but only turned it over in his hand as Seven gave the slightest of tearful nods. The world seemed to spin as if the ship had been caught in a plasma storm as he stared down at it and understanding flooded in. He was glad of Seven's hand on his arm, knew she was the only thing holding him upright as he found confirmation in his own eyes staring back at him. "Yes." He said thickly, "I have nothing left to lose, and you have everything. That's why I'm here, to give you a chance of keeping it."

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><p><strong>An: Please review. :) Thank you to Teya, who reminded me of this fic and led me to add to this particular story again after many failed drafts. Also, thank you to cojack, whose own updates of 'Dear Alixia' and 'Unite' were a much needed pick-me-up while I was writing this. **


	11. Chapter 11

**A/n: I'm so sorry for my lack of updates for the past few weeks, I strained my back and couldn't sit at the computer for long at a time. So this chapter has taken me much longer than usual to type out.**

**Also, I've moved this story' rating up to M to cover a single use of strong language in this chapter. I don't usually use it, but I felt it fit the situation if not the context of the TV show. I do not own said TV show, Star Trek: Voyager.**

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><p>It seemed like Harry's eyes were the last to lift from his console to the open turbolift doors. The Bridge was a constant fishbowl, the only place where most people got to watch their officers in close quarters for a shift at a time. In a crew whose isolation had fostered as much disenfranchisement at times as it had fierce loyalty, after all no one could complain to the greater Starfleet authorities any more than they could transfer out, studying the senior officers, often described by their more mulish underlings as a clique, was the sole avenue they had for anticipating the direction of the decisions that defined their lives as well as their roles. Whether the Captain and Chakotay were chatty or reserved with each other, if Tuvok was called into the Ready Room multiple times to advise, whether Seven was consulted in Astrometrics or confined to her Cargo Bay, whether Tom was jovial or intense; these were just some of the weathervanes the wider crew had developed over the years to judge the prevailing atmosphere aboard their ship.<p>

Harry, being a fully, uncontested Starfleet member of the 'Briefing Room Clique' had never been as dependent on these variables, gossipy rather than scientific of course, to feel that he had a grasp of what was going on aboard his ship, but right now he stared at those doors as openly as the lowliest crewman on the shift. The shock of seeing the older Chakotay hardly lessened with the second time around, especially with…their Chakotay, as well as Seven of Nine, in his wake. He _had _been listening, because he considered it born out of concern rather than a hunger for gossip, when the former Maquis, still acknowledged to have the best insight into Chakotay's often opaque thought processes even after seven years of integration, had come to an overwhelming consensus that the First Officer would not be handling the appearance of 'Captain' Chakotay well. Remembering just how disturbing it had been just to see a recording of another Harry Kim, haggard and grim, saying words with his voice that had transcended time, Harry had more than enough reason to agree with the assessment wholeheartedly. He glanced at Tom, who'd half-turned in his seat to watch the scene, seemingly determined in his unease to project the illusion that he hardly cared about the situation. That it was an illusion, Harry was convinced. Tom _had _to care about getting home, even if he had built more for himself on Voyager than he himself had, than most people had. He dimly started to realise, though refused to acknowledge, that his own desire to finally get home might be blinding him. Looking between the hard, protective shell of almost cynical doubt on Tom's face as he stared at the temporal interloper, and Chakotay, who seemed literally at war with himself, guilt began to gnaw away at Harry's hope. As the older Chakotay marched towards him, he hurriedly closed the scenario generator programme on the transwarp conduit the Captain had quietly asked him to run less than an hour before.

"The Captain's still in her Ready Room?" Captain Chakotay asked brusquely. He saw Harry give a slight start in response to his tone but his stance didn't soften as his dark, stony gaze moved agitatedly between Harry's guileless face and the Ready Room doors.

Harry started to open his mouth then closed it again. Alarm bells were ringing in his head, if he was too invested in getting home to be considered wholly objective, this man wasn't fit to be advising the Captain at all. Knowledge of whatever future he'd lived through not only blinded him but had deafened and hobbled him. His latent instinct to protect not only his Captain's integrity but that of Voyager itself came to the fore, his back straightened and he stared the older man down. "She ordered that she shouldn't be disturbed, sir." He replied quietly, unable to completely hide the quiver in his voice.

It was not the elder but the younger Chakotay's heavy, wearied sigh that hit his ears in response. "Harry, we have to talk to her." He muttered. His voice carried its usual calm, soft tone, but the strain in his face was painfully evident. "It's important."

Harry had noted before that he and Seven, though they'd entered with Captain Chakotay, kept themselves distant from him, a contained unit separate from the temporal crusader. Now he saw, with a few blinks of disbelief, that they were holding hands as if for dear life. That was as out of character for Chakotay as it was for Seven, though he couldn't even be sure if they were even maintaining the unorthodox contact. Each set of eyes was pinched and vague, with Chakotay's as fixated on the Ready Room as his counterpart's while Seven's seemed to flick constantly between the two men. Nausea suddenly did somersaults in his stomach as he started to connect the dots. Had Captain Chakotay told them something about the future? Was Seven in danger? Or people they both cared about? He gazed fearfully at Chakotay, "Go ahead Commander, she's in there." He told him thickly.

If Captain Chakotay was offended by his abrupt change of tact, he made little sign of it, the glance he cast back towards his younger self an odd mix of wryness and grim sorrow. As he moved towards the Ready Room, he found himself mulling over the exchange. Memories of inspiring loyalty and friendship had dimmed with age and isolation, he'd forgotten how far each member of the Voyager crew could push the boundaries of trust in another. It struck him as naïve, almost unbelievable, even as he admired and recalled it. True, an older Harry Kim, robbed of the innocence of youth, as hardened by grief and loss as he was, had still helped him get here, but things had changed… Maybe they wouldn't have too. Maybe the family would stay intact if it got home intact, with no more struggle, no more death.

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><p>Janeway reflexively reached for her lucky mug, though her eyes, strained from staring at her console screen, were considerably drier than her throat. She gasped as the mug started to slip from her hand, hardly managing to set it shakily back on the desk, major coffee spillage narrowly avoided. She grimaced as she belatedly realised her palms were slick with sweat, the tiny, intricate muscles weaved around her aging bones quivering as if they were connected to a constant electrical current. It was either a message from her body to give up her caffeine addiction or her captaincy, she decided with a flash of dark humour as she regarded the mug thoughtfully. Like her, it was worn down and chipped but not broken. Lucky. She couldn't risk forsaking any of her old charms today, if there was any day were good luck was a necessity, today was it. She seemed to be telling herself that more often with every passing year. Pushing that pessimistic thought aside as rigorously as she rubbed those wet palms on her trousers, she took a single, stubborn swig from the mug and refocused on the console.<p>

The hub really was massive. The spider's web with which the Borg intended to ensnare the galaxy. They already were, one system at a time. And Chakotay, _Chakotay_, the freedom fighter, the spiritual libertarian, was telling her to follow the silk spun by the Borg spider to get home. He was right; that it would take her home was indisputable, there were multiple conduit exit apertures embedded in Alpha Quadrant space, dissecting its heart as well as its vaguely mapped fringes. The scans Harry had run for her, directed by Chakotay's plan, revealed that, if they chose the optimum conduit, Voyager would pop out just beyond the pull of Earth's orbit, perhaps even directly above Bloomington, Indiana. The Borg's greatest tactical advantage indeed.

A transwarp hub made the Caretaker's array look like a water pistol. Its use would not only affect the fate of a single inhabited world, but of billions. It was the injection site through which the Collective would spread their poison through the veins of the galaxy. Exploiting it for good, for getting her crew home, was a temptation she knew anyone, if they'd lived through what she and her people had, would understand. As soon as their bravery, their ingenuity, was applauded by everyone at home however, there would be the stronger wave of panic that such a thing existed. A fleet, multiple fleets, would be deployed, to find these hubs and destroy them. The ultimate pointless search through the proverbial haystack. She'd stumbled across the needle, could she ignore it? Get home, but leave that home in an impossibly vulnerable position as the consequence?

The familiar sensorial cocktail of nausea, adrenaline and heightened awareness she'd come to associate over the years with decisions, with responsibility and necessity, washed over her. She would grasp at her only chance to destroy this web.

As if he'd heard the cogs clicking in her mind, the Ready Room doors opened unannounced and both versions of Chakotay marched in. She'd half expected another confrontation with both of them, but not at once. Their stance of mutual avoidance had compromised her position no end, playing peacekeeper instead of decision maker, and the fact that they were together now stunned her. The resemblance between them had never been more striking. Captain Chakotay had been a creature onto his own, a violent storm of emotion barely contained within a visceral, bitter and blinkered, determination; her First Officer had hardly been more controlled, lashing out at this version of himself who had brought on an existential crisis of sort. Now however, those competing forces of nature seemed to have blown themselves out. Painful resignation had settled on both haggard faces, the impotent frustration drained away. In fact, the emotions that had warred so close to the surface, demanding her empathy, had been locked away. All she could see was a glinting, steely kernel of hard, icy pragmatism in both sets of dark eyes that set a flame of warning up her spine.

"Have you made you decision Captain?" Captain Chakotay, taking the dominant role without his younger self making a murmur, asked bluntly.

Kathryn bit her lip, hedging as she rose slowly to her feet behind the barricade of her desk. It was only then that she noticed that Seven was also there, in plain sight between the two men. Her expression revealed even less than theirs, as she should've expected from her, but she'd become practised enough at reading between the lines with Seven and was relieved to see that her protégé had none of that disturbing hardness in her, it was despondency, hopelessness, that tinted her stoic resignation. She peered at her, gasping softly when she was that Seven's human eye, though dry, was horribly bloodshot and puffy, giving her already asymmetrical face an eerie quality as her cybernetic eye was of course unaffected. She could count on one hand the number of times Seven had been shaken enough by circumstances to show the slightest evidence of crying… "What did he tell you?" she whispered hoarsely, heart thudding through her ears.

"Enough. He told us enough." Chakotay replied thickly, shifting uncomfortably as Kathryn turned her horrified, empathic eyes on him. He'd been the one who'd convinced his counterpart that it was necessary to impress the weight of the future on her, his older self had been understandably reluctant to expose his grief to her, had snapped that 'he shouldn't even have told them'. Well it was too damned late for that and he'd told him so, but now that it came to it he couldn't force the words to his own lips. It turned out it was a lot easier to be self-righteous when you're ignorant of the personal costs, he wasn't sure if he could bring himself to rob Kathryn of that ignorance. He'd reminded his elder self that Kathryn wouldn't agree unless she knew what they were faced with, and he'd believed it then, but now doubt flared within him. She didn't cope with indecision, couldn't handle moral ambiguity. Kathryn Janeway would cling to her first instinctive conviction to the bitter, violent end with the commitment of a zealot rather than get lost in the void of anxiety and guilt that she associated with indecision. "We have to do something Kathryn."

Janeway studied him for a second then flicked her eyes keenly to his elder. "Can you guarantee that the hub is our saving grace Chakotay?" she asked softly, "That we won't be assimilated in the attempt? That…" Her voice caught, "…the full force of the Collective won't hail down on Earth straight on Voyager's heels?"

Captain Chakotay broke his deadened state at her for an instant, his jaw churning. "No." He admitted abruptly, "I can't."

Janeway regarded him sadly, her shoulders slumping. "Any more than I can." She concluded.

His eyes flared at her knowing tone. "Kathryn, if the Borg wanted to invade the Alpha Quadrant, they could do it whether Voyager uses the hub or not, its very existence proves that!"

"Precisely!" she snapped hotly, staring at him as she would a stranger before heaving a deep breath, regaining control of herself, "That's it exactly, that's why we _must _destroy the hub."

All three faces stared blankly back at her, struck dumb. It was Seven who comprehended her first, for once in her life unable to stand like a good drone, blindly seeking out the nearest chair with her hand before sinking into it as her legs gave way. It was Captain Chakotay who spoke, his voice suddenly like that of a painfully young, lost little boy. "Destroy it?"

"Yes." Janeway told him almost gently, but then her voice hardened with conviction. "It can't be allowed to exist. The Collective can't have such a tactical advantage, such a hold over billions upon billions of lives! If you can't understand that, then you never were the man that I thought I knew…"

"If you think I don't realise what the Borg are capable of…" Chakotay forced out, his whole body shaking with the violence of his grief and hatred as he thought of what they'd stolen from Seven, as he remembered holding Freya's cold, broken body, her baby face mutilated by nanoprobes injected into her dying veins. No, if he thought of those things, he'd strangle Kathryn while giving her the Queen's face, as he'd once driven the life out of Cardassians. So he remained still, the violence instead exploding from his mouth, "You have no _fucking _idea!" He heaved a breath in, feeling weak and sickened as he met her terrified eyes. "You don't know anything." He choked out in a broken whisper, turning away from her.

"Then tell me what I don't know Chakotay!" Janeway pleaded with him desperately, stricken by what she'd just witnessed, "_Please_!"

Seeing that his other self was far too overcome and struggling to control himself to continue, the younger Chakotay stepped in, repeating what he'd been told himself. "In the sixteen more years it'll take Voyager to get to the Alpha Quadrant, 22 people are going to die." It was just a bald a statement coming from his lips as it had been to hear it, it was only with the next one that his voice cracked. "Seven is going to die." Kathryn's face, already drained of its fiery red anger to a shocked ashen grey, turned to Seven with a strangled gasp, huge eyes glistening with tears of guilt. Seven, as she had before, seemed almost unmoved by the declaration, instead fixating on consoling her 'husband', ignoring the Captain's reaction completely. Chakotay couldn't bring himself to mention Freya, the blow that Seven couldn't help but feel. His older self had managed not to even in his anger, but then he hadn't been able to tell _him_ how she'd died, it had been Seven who had told him. In a choked but steady whisper that had somehow been more upsetting that if she'd sobbed it out. She hadn't let him hold her then, as she had allowed his older self. She'd stepped back from him and asked that Freya's fate was the one they not share with Janeway as a bargaining chip. They'd both agreed, his older self murmuring that Freya was 'theirs' alone.

Kathryn had sunk back into her chair, "How?" she asked faintly.

"Does it matter?" Captain Chakotay ground out, finally looking at her again as Seven kept steadying hands on his shoulders.

"Of course it matters!" She cried out, "If…if we know how she dies, how all of them die, we can stop it from happening…" She was struggling to catch her breath, "If I'm more careful, then I won't lose anyone, I'll get them all home…"

The frantic, honest desire in her voice managed to reach him and Captain Chakotay's face was softened by pity. "You're already losing someone Kathryn." He informed her, some compassion seeping into his tone, "Tuvok has a degenerative neurological disease, he's already feeling the effects. His window of opportunity to get treatment, a mind meld with a family member, with close soon. Within a few years, he'll be a shadow of himself, and within a few more his mind will be gone." He sighed heavily, finding Seven's hand and squeezing it hard. "Even if I could prevent all of the deaths I witnessed by telling you of the circumstances, there would be others. If not Seven, then me or Harry, Tom or B'Elanna. Eventually it could even be…their daughter."

Kathryn nodded, her face in her hands, then looked between him and her console screen where the transwarp hub still loomed. "Seven…" She began hoarsely, "Is…Is there any way we could traverse the conduits to get home _and _destroy the hub?"

Seven blinked at her, understanding slow in coming as her head continued to throb with strain and exhaustion. Dimly, she recalled that the Doctor had advised her to 'take it easy' for a few days. Well, if his operation hadn't succeeded, the failsafe would've undoubtedly killed her already today. She couldn't help but feel angry at her Captain for asking that question, she didn't deserve to carry the burden of devising such a perfect solution. Yet if they did nothing it was likely she would die, any happiness with Chakotay would be short-lived. It was selfish to equate that with the billions of lives that would be saved from assimilation with the destruction of the hub. She'd participated in such assimilations, perhaps her life was a small price to pay for stopping it. If the hub had been eliminated originally, perhaps Freya would've never faced the Borg. Countless children, some as young as she had been, wouldn't face the Borg… However, she knew better than anyone that the Collective would eventually recoup their losses, that they had other transwarp hubs.

Chakotay saw the conflict raging over her face and fought to put a stop to it, glaring at Janeway accusingly. "Damn it Kathryn! There's no point in these what-ifs…" He began, grimacing as he saw agreement and even approval flash over his older doppelganger's face. He was turning into him.

Seven stopped him in his tracks as she spoke slowly but clearly, her first words since she'd left Captain Chakotay's temporary quarters. "It…may be possible. I do not know." She answered frankly, "Most things _might _be possible." She amended, hands clenched on her lap as she finally looked the Captain straight in the face, challenging her to see reality. "But Captain, we cannot always have what we most would wish for, whether that is getting home or damaging the Collective."

Janeway rose slowly to her feet again, focusing on the door to the Bridge. "Then we should focus on the plan we already had." She muttered grimly, "Getting home."

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><p><strong>An: Please review. Do check out Teya's brilliant new C/7 and P/T two-shot 'The Ultimate Cheesecake Challenge', where Tom and Seven's little culinary bet rapidly gets out of hand with their long-suffering significant others and friends looking on… Lol. ;) **


	12. Chapter 12

**A/n: ****Thank you to my beta for this chapter NikkiB1973. I apologise for my lack of updates through January, I was moving house, studying, and had other real life distractions, and writers' block ensued! Thanks too to cojack for posting a wonderful C/7 AU of 'Natural Law' titled 'Legacy'. If I wasn't enjoying reading it so much I'd be jealous I hadn't thought of the idea myself. ;)**

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><p>"If we're really going to do this…" Janeway abandoned the barricade that was her desk and began to pace the Ready Room. Her body had always been an outlet for mental agitation, she could never sit still when her mind was speeding ahead, although her face was a polished mask of determination that tried to belie the quiver in her voice as she weaved between the frozen, apprehensive figures of Seven and the two Chakotays. "…then we're going to have to redouble our efforts to adapt Captain Chakotay's gift of technology to Voyager." She exhaled as she quickened her already erratic stride. "Seven, how much progress have you made on deploying that armour plating?"<p>

Seven stood up hurriedly to face her Captain, but wobbled as a wave of light-headedness slammed into her. Only the elder Chakotay's shaking but strong hands grasping her elbows held her upright. For an unnerving second that aged, gaunt shadow of his handsome face doubled in front of her as her optical array failed to compensate, merely giving the double vision a green tinge. She had to blink rapidly as she refocused on Janeway's concerned but still expectant expression. Seven had been among humans for long enough, and had caught the identical grimace passing briefly over both Chakotays faces, to see that the implication behind the Captain's brusque words, that she'd been slacking off from her work and wilfully embroiled herself in this, was impolitic, but she was too pragmatic, and too exhausted, to care. "We have successfully implemented the armour plating over 57% of Voyager's hull, prioritising essential areas." She informed the Captain, as glad to cling to the facts as she was that she had led and expedited the project before that fateful decision to enter Captain Chakotay's quarters.

"57%?" Janeway echoed. Under the circumstances, her initial wonder at the technology and if it could be implemented at all had of course been forgotten.

Seven hadn't forgotten, "I chose to forego the relevant Starfleet procedures for introducing new technology Captain." Janeway's knowing smirk in reply was grim, but still enough to push her into revealing less promising statistics. "With our available supplies of tritanium, I calculate we should be able to deploy another 8.5%."

"Hardly 65%." The Captain muttered, "We'll just have to make the most of it, and all of the torpedoes we can convert to isometric."

"We will have fifteen such torpedoes at most." Seven told her, her tone sharper than she'd intended. She'd never prescribed to the idea of 'soft-pedalling' the truth and she didn't consider now the time to start. "We cannot replicate enough of the required components to convert all of our conventional torpedoes."

Janeway finally stopped her incessant pacing as one look at Seven's ashen but still frank face made her sigh heavily, but personal concern for her protégé was soon overtaken by professional necessity. "We'll have to do all that we can." She said firmly, though the hand she reached out to gently pat Seven's shoulder lingered there poignantly. Despite herself Seven swallowed, afflicted with a mixture of affection and guilt. The story of her own short-lived future had undoubtedly affected her mentor's decision, and that, though indirectly, laid the fate of the entire crew at her feet.

"We will." Chakotay assured her quietly, his brisk nod more to hide his disturbed frown than to emphasise any sense of agreement. Did Kathryn really think that, if these futuristic enhancements failed against the inevitable Borg onslaught, that their usual abilities, a rundown of which Kathryn herself had provided by default during that doomed alliance, would be enough to save them? He almost preferred that glimpse of doubt he'd just seen, the spectre of acknowledgement that perhaps Seven's warning that acceptance of continuing their journey, redeemed neither by a deserved but miraculous shortcut home nor a heroic death destroying the Borg, was perhaps the wisest path, ending not in glory or happiness but survival for some. He knew Kathryn wouldn't be able to face, let alone swallow, such a truth, and he had to admit he was choking on it. Doing nothing was not an option, his elder self's vision of the future had robbed him of the idea of relative contentment on Voyager. He stiffened as he heard fragments of anxious conversation seep through the closed door from the Bridge, his stomach sinking. He felt they didn't have a choice, and maybe he and Seven really didn't, but what about the rest of the crew? Kathryn would ask anything of them in order to get them home, but she'd always romanticised their commitment, their bounds to each other and to her. He'd spent too many years campaigning behind the scenes for calm and stability after traumatic incidents not to realise that plunging into a Borg transwarp hub would be a hard sell, and rightly so. Voyager isn't a democracy, Kathryn had reminded him of that too often, but it was a community too, a family as Kathryn also, somewhat paradoxically, had declared. "I'll go down and monitor Engineering, get the latest reports…"

Janeway nodded stiffly, "But don't give them any details yet Chakotay…"

He shot her an exasperated look, "You know that only the four of us are _ever _going to know the details Kathryn…"

Janeway's jaw tightened, hearing an allusion to the Temporal Prime Directive in his words, and more directly, to his fear and doubt that she was struggling not to share. He always did this, even when he _asked _her to make a firm decision, he would continue to doubt and question. "I suppose I should be grateful that you let me in on all that we're faced with." She retorted icily, her hurt momentarily evident.

"Yes, you should be." Captain Chakotay agreed roughly, growing impatient. They'd been bogged down for long enough, the window of opportunity was closing. Seven, as well as Janeway, flinched at his acrid tone and the former pulled back from him.

Chakotay sighed brokenly, running a weary hand through his hair as he glared at his unhelpful counterpart. "I have to tell them something. The rumour mill could be our worst enemy right now, the last thing we need is mass distraction…" He saw Seven wince and cursed himself silently. As if the 'horrors' of a churning rumour mill could be compared to the Collective.

Janeway though, forgave his momentary tactlessness. "I see your point." She admitted softly, "For now I'll leave what to tell the wider crew to your judgement." Her eyes wandered away from Chakotay's face and fixated on some faraway star out of the window. "I'll review Captain Chakotay's plan as well as all of our department status reports then call a senior staff briefing…" Her voice trailed off for a moment, then thickened painfully. "First I have to speak to Tuvok." She twisted away from them as her shoulders gave a violent shudder, "Why didn't he tell me? If he'd told me the hub was his only chance…"

Seven stared at her, somewhat disbelieving that the Captain could not understand her Tactical Officer's logic. Tuvok would never ask his Captain to sake an undue risk, as he would see this plan, for his sake alone. He'd tried to quietly cope with and privately accept his fate. Why should he carry the responsibility of forcing a choice on his entire crew? She of course, now shared that unwanted burden. "He would have told you when he was ready Captain." She murmured compassionately.

"Yes." Janeway agreed at once, eyes glistening with tears for a split second before she blinked them away and shook herself. "I suppose we're all facing things we're not ready for." She added philosophically, her gaze vague and turned in on herself before she returned to the present. "Seven, take time to regenerate for an hour." She advised kindly, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look even worse than I feel."

"Yes Captain." Seven replied with a heavy sigh while nonetheless leaving it ambiguous whether she was agreeing with the first part of the statement as well as the second, which the Captain instantly picked up on.

"You've already got your teams working on the improvements, take the time, we'll need you at your best. I also know B'Elanna wouldn't be dragged from Engineering under the circumstances, so…" Her gaze rounded on Captain Chakotay as she heard him clearing his throat and her eyes widened as she picked up on the hint. "Is that your way of advising me to change my bet on the baby pool Chakotay?" she demanded wryly. She was surprised to feel a wan smile pulling at her lips as she wondered, not for the first time, if the rules of the universe had an ironic, twisted, sense of humour. Had it really just been yesterday she'd wished she could promise Tom and B'Elanna that their daughter would be born safe in the Alpha Quadrant? "Maybe she'll be an Alpha Quadrant baby after all." She muttered with a wan smile and a slight shrug. "You're dismissed, do what you need to do."

Seven replied with a measured nod, for the Captain's sake, but the calm façade splintered as she turned on her heel, her usual grace abandoning her as the action made her stumble, her smooth retreat degenerating into a messy, fleeing escape. The unaccustomed chaos of her mind was amplified by the storm of anxious questions that was unleashed around her as she stepped back onto the Bridge. The expected decorum and respect for the usual gradual trickle of information down the chain of command had apparently been forgotten today, or perhaps her face revealed too much to their observant eyes. She felt the blood rush out of her head at that thought, shame flooding her as well as dizziness, but mercifully she managed to push through it and find the safety of the turbolift. As she sagged gratefully against the cool surface of the wall, she was uncomfortably aware of her heart throbbing through her ribcage, but with a few deep breaths the irrational adrenaline running through her, perhaps the most counterproductive human hormone in her opinion, was surpassed by the physiological regulation of her implants. She clung on tenaciously to that manufactured calm, and everything except the task at hand began to recede. "Deck Six." She ordered shortly.

"Computer, belay that order." Captain Chakotay winced as he saw Seven start violently at the sound of his voice. "You heard what Kathryn told you Seven, you need to regenerate." He advised her softly.

Seven stiffened, her hands clenching behind her back as she stepped away from the support of the turbolift wall and fixed her gaze on him unblinkingly. "That order was superseded by the situation." She reminded him tersely, confused exasperation creasing her brow. "_You _have informed me repeatedly that this…opportunity is a short lived one…" Her voice had heated up, and she stopped herself and said in a clipped, rational tone, "With Lieutenant Torres due to go into labour I cannot neglect my work…"

"If your implants start to fail you'll be in a much worse state than B'Elanna." Chakotay responded shortly, his jaw locking as he thought of the sporadic mental and physical agony he'd witnessed Seven endure over the years as stubbornly as she was now. "You've just had major surgery on your cortical node…" He argued recklessly, his judgement clouded by memory.

All the blood whose rush away had left her weak moments before flooded back into Seven's cheeks, mortification and violated anger surpassing her constant stalkers anxiety and guilt. "You know about that?!" she choked out, throat convulsing as she was chilled by a more horrific possibility. "Does the Captain know of it?"

Chakotay shook his head wordlessly, instantly realising that he'd misjudged the situation. Of course they'd had arguments about her workload and health frequently, he supposed they still lay ahead for Seven, but they'd been brief spats, passing over in moments. She'd understood by then that his intervention was not to belittle her but rooted in his own concern. The fact that he'd always been rather glad that Seven felt comfortable being openly annoyed with him, when she hid such feelings from others, felt ironic now. In the present, her younger version didn't understand much of what was happening, and was emotionally raw. A fearsome combination. "No, she doesn't know." He assured her simply, gently. "You only ever told me." He smiled sadly as her eyes widened in disbelief, it wasn't his place to convince her he didn't care about her experiments on the holodeck as long as the failsafe had been discovered and removed, that role was his younger self's alone. "You've always been so honest Seven, so strong. You underestimate yourself."

Seven remained silent for several seconds before she spoke up, tonelessly. "I am not strong." She shivered and suddenly her eyes flashed at him, "Nor am I exceptional." The painful pressure behind her eyes that she'd finally connected to full tear ducts began to build up again, but she refused to give into the release of crying. All of the guilt and fear she'd been struggling under, the weight of expectation and grief, did escape however, and violently. "Why should my fate be changed at the risk of the lives of the crew?" she demanded hoarsely, "You've…You've made a mistake, you should have gone back and saved your daughter, not me…"

"Seven, I…" Chakotay's voice died in his throat, too stunned to form a coherent answer. Blindly, he seized her arms and held them in a white knuckle grip. Whether he would've shaken or embraced her was left unknown as Commander Chakotay chose that moment to enter the turbolift after being waylaid by questions on the Bridge. He froze, the turbolift doors swishing shut behind him, as he caught the two so tightly embroiled.

"What's going on?" he asked tightly.

Seven jerked to free herself but Captain Chakotay had already dropped her arms, was even shrinking back from her, his face as unreadable as hers. "We're fine." Seven assured him robotically, "I intend to regenerate now."

* * *

><p>Green light flicked, penetrating her eyelids, forking across the oblivion of regeneration like a bolt of lightning. The thunder that followed it was vocal, billions of voices building up and rolling over her mind as the most turbulent of storm clouds. She strained, longing to feel the brief electrical current of being roused from her cycle, waking in her cargo bay, but she was drowning in the sea of souls…<p>

Seven's eyes flew open, her back arching as she tried to run, but she couldn't move. Her body was not really here, only her senses had passed the gauntlet. This vessel wasn't real, it was an image projected into her mind's eye by the will of the Collective, too empty, too silent to be otherwise. Only the Central Vinculum, the column that funnelled the thoughts of the Collective mind, lit the massive space. The lightning she'd seen was contained in here, and it represented trillions of thoughts, while also being one contained, perfect light.

"You still see the beauty of us." A familiar voice intoned softly, approaching out of the hazy, irrelevant edges of the scene. A hand, crisscrossed with silver veins that followed an identical pattern to her own stretched out supplely and gave the Vinculum a lingering, sensual caress. "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, it's been too long." Her voice purred, the sound of the efficient machine she was.

"What do you want?" Seven demanded, her voice was not so effortless but she was relieved that she at least sounded harsh, angry. It was a thin veil for her terror, but she wasn't about to give it up.

The Queen appeared in full view now, directly in front of her former drone, who was trapped her in an alcove as her regeneration cycle continued aboard Voyager. The soaring column of the Vinculum loomed behind her like a throne. Its light made the implants attaching the humanoid head to the most perfected cybernetic body in the Collective gleam like ropes of pearls. "Do I need a reason to visit a friend?" She replied smoothly, unperturbed by Seven's tone. Her use of the first person was contemptuous, would've been ironic if she wasn't indeed a single dominant voice among billions.

That contempt strengthened Seven, "We are _not _friends." She countered icily, bloodless lips barely parting.

"No." The Queen agreed thoughtfully, head cocking ever so slightly. The naked skin of her skull had the colour and sheen of marble. Her stride was elegance in efficiency, she carried herself as if she was clothed in all the royal regalia imaginable, the confidence of the Collective was her velvet and gold brocade, the assurance of their shared perfection her crowing jewel. "We are more than that." She'd reached Seven now and touched her arm, underlying the fact that under the disguising sleeve of her biosuit, Seven's arm had more Borg technology than flesh and blood. "We are family." Her eyes, the irises themselves silver with the most advanced optical implants known, glittered with triumph as she felt Seven shudder. Her drone's body trying to reject what she was saying even as the truth of it penetrated her mind. "Now, while we are on the subject of old friends, I see that Voyager has a visitor. From the future." Her grip tightened mercilessly around Seven's arm, "Tell me why."

Seven forced herself to meet those sinister eyes, the very fact that the Queen had to threaten her like this, intimidate her with a private audience, confirmed what her rational mind already knew. "You may be able to communicate with me while I am regenerating, but I am no longer a drone. I do not answer to you."

The Queen blinked, her brow furrowing slightly as she accessed the Hive mind and came to a decision to change tact. Something akin to amusement, a contorted shadow of a mother's expression when a child is being precocious, passed over her taut face as her fingers brushed Seven's chin, ready to either be tender or claw at the human skin. "You've always been my favourite…Seven."

Seven gave a violent start, not only from hearing that affectionate diminutive from the Queen's lips, but the shocking thought it elicited. If I am your favourite, why did the Collective abandon me? The question was all the more powerful for the self-hatred it induced in her, almost bringing her to tears when the Queen's theatrics had not. How could she still be so weak as to allow one shred of herself to miss the Hive mind? And it was more than one shred. During their last encounter, the Queen had told her that her time with the Voyager crew, the Collective's abandonment, had been an intentional part of an over arcing grand plan. She'd never wanted to believe it, couldn't reduce her existence to being one tool the Borg would use to assimilate humanity, but it an aspect of it had been guiltily comforting too. One thing she was certain of, the Queen's ability to use any opportunity to its full effect knew no bounds.

The Queen had been studying her face, and chose this moment to continue. "In spite of their obvious imperfections, I know how much you care for the Voyager crew." She murmured, "So I have left them alone, until now."

The reality of that particular threat crystallised Seven's fear and despite herself she began to openly struggle, panic edging into her voice. "Voyager is no threat to the Collective! We only wish to return to the Alpha Quadrant!"

The Queen's gaze narrowed almost unperceptively, seemingly dissatisfied with that answer and reactions. Drones did not panic, drones did not plead. "I have no objection to that." She assured Seven darkly, "But you will _not_ use my nebula to achieve that goal, what your visitor from the future may have told you to the contrary is irrelevant…" She broke off for an instant, her expression vague, then she gave a satisfied sigh, the first sign that she breathed at all. "We have identified the temporal transgressor…the Maquis First Officer Chakotay." She returned her hand to Seven's face, stroking. "He is the one who violated your mind, who ultimately severed your link with us." Her tone verged on resentful. "We would not have predicted his action. You did not give us a good report for him, it seems his judgement remains flawed." She regarded Seven intently, whose fear surged. The belief that the Queen was omnipotent had been programmed into her. The fear that her thoughts could still be probed was real. Had she let something slip? The Queen might know everything. About Chakotay. About Freya.

"Chakotay's judgement is astute. If anyone's judgement was flawed at that time it was my own." Seven responded thickly.

"Your judgement is flawed now if you wish to follow Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant." The Queen told her coolly, "You are Borg. You will always be Borg. The Federation will never assimilate you, they will fear your uniqueness." She leaned right into Seven's face, "We created you. You are part of us, part of what they hate. The Alpha Quadrant may be Voyager's home, but the Collective is yours."

Seven gulped, shocked to feel a tear sliding down her cheek even as she recoiled from the Queen. "Be that as it may…" She choked out, "I will do _everything _I can to get Voyager home, my fate is irrelevant."

Whatever patience the Queen had with this futile method of frustration ran out. "If you enter my nebula, I will destroy you _all_!" Her fist grasped the air, but for Seven it felt as if she seized her spine and yanked. The last thing she was aware of before everything went black was a shower of fiery sparks exploding through the alcove.

* * *

><p>"What happened?" Chakotay demanded as he burst into Sickbay, with his older self alongside him. Seven was lying supine on the closest biobed, her face had a deathly pallor and her optical implant was stained red from a shallow but steadily bleeding cut on her temple.<p>

The Doctor concentrated on running a dermal regenerator over the cut before lifting his gaze up from his patient to meet the wide eyes of both Chakotays. He'd already had this fraught conversation with the Captain, who still hovered anxiously. "There was a feedback loop in her alcove. She'll wake up feeling as if she's boxed with a Tarrellian, but she'll be fine…"

"God damn it!" Captain Chakotay burst out, "That fucking bitch…"

"Excuse me?!" Janeway spat out indignantly.

"The Borg Queen." He explained sharply, "She's contacted Seven, and put her through hell no doubt…"

The younger Chakotay turned on him, "You _knew _this might happen and you let her regenerate?!"

Captain Chakotay didn't respond with his usual worn out temper, he was on the verge of guilty tears as he stared at Seven but blinked them back. "I thought I'd got here under their radar…" He swallowed thickly, "I just didn't think…"

Janeway's demeanour had changed completely, "None of us anticipated this Chakotay…" She was interrupted by Seven's gasp back into consciousness. "Seven?" She grasped the younger woman's hand, "Are you alright?"

Seven stared at her dumbly for a moment, griping the Captain's hand like a life ring as she struggled to grasp what had happened. "Captain…" She rasped, "The Queen…she knows we intend to use the nebula. If we go ahead with our plan, Voyager will be assimilated…or destroyed."

Janeway knew better than to ask her if she was sure. She was surprised by the grief and disappointment that flooded her. Her emotional, if not practical, commitment to getting home was total. "Well, that changes things…"

"Wait, wait…" Captain Chakotay broke in suddenly, "Maybe it changes things for the better." He avoided Seven's wet, uncomprehending eyes as she sat up, focusing instead on Kathryn's warily hopeful ones. "I could have a backup, a way to have our cake and eat it too. I didn't consider it before, when the Borg were unaware, but now we have to eliminate them…"

"Eliminate them?" Janeway asked, grasping his elbow. "Alright, I'll bite. Tell me this new plan…" She glanced back at Seven in concern, "…but not here."

Chakotay felt numb as he watched the two of them leave. Once again, as he looked at Seven, who was staring vacantly at the door, jaw locked, he felt completely detached from his elder self and his mad frenzy. His tunnel vision. And Kathryn, she'd hardly paid attention to Seven beyond her intel. In her the oversight was frustrating, in himself it was unforgivable. Unsure whether he was shaking from shock, anger or both, he cautiously approached Seven, taking hold of her clammy hands as she shifted to sit on the edge of the biobed. "Seven…" He halted, anything he could've said was inadequate, but he knew he had to get her to talk. "What else did the Queen say to you?"

"I reported what was relevant to the Captain." Seven mumbled, eyes averted.

"Anything that upsets you is relevant Seven." Chakotay told her emphatically, a frustrated sound rising unbidden out of his throat as she paled even further, but remained stubbornly silent. "Unless you'd rather speak to Captain Chakotay…"

Seven tensed, staring at him blankly, hearing him without understanding. The _last _thing she wanted right now was the stranger who was Captain Chakotay. The one to whom she owed a debt she was too afraid to pay, who presented so much confusion… "No." She managed to croak out, feeling shame mixed with relief as she admitted it. Her mental numbness started to recede she saw those two conflicting emotions mirrored on his face, with regret and guilt in the eyes that wouldn't meet hers. Was he jealous? She realised dully. The idea was ludicrous, and yet not, given their circumstances. "I am scared Chakotay." She whispered, the last syllable of his name contorted by a choked sob. "And not just of the Collective…"

"I know." Chakotay found himself saying, not able to recall when either of them had been so open about admitting such a thing in the goal-orientated environment of Voyager. For senior officers, fear was a taboo emotion, never fully acknowledging it for sanity's sake. "Honey, I'm scared out of my mind."

* * *

><p><strong>An: Please review. **


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